Symbolic Data Analysis and the SODAS Software

Symbolic data analysis is a relatively new field that provides a range of methods for analyzing complex datasets. Standard statistical methods do not have the power or flexibility to make sense of very large datasets, and symbolic data analysis techniques have been developed in order to extract knowledge from such data. Symbolic data methods differ from that of data mining, for example, because rather than identifying points of interest in the data, symbolic data methods allow the user to build models of the data and make predictions about future events.
This book is the result of the work  f a pan-European project team led by Edwin Diday following 3 years work sponsored by EUROSTAT.  It includes a full explanation of the new SODAS software developed as a result of this project. The software and methods described highlight the crossover between statistics and computer science, with a particular emphasis on data mining.

Edwin Diday, Centre De Recherche en Mathématiques de la Décision, Université Paris 9, France
Edwin is a Professor of Computer Science, with 50 published papers, and 14 authored or edited books to his name. He has led international research teams in Symbolic Data Analysis, and is the founder of the field.

M. Noirhomme-Fraiture, Institute of Computer Science, University of Namur, Belgium
Monique Noirhomme-Fraiture is Professor and Head of the Unit of Applied Mathematics at the above faculty. She is involved in several HCI projects as well as having organized conferences and workshops within this field. She has contributed to 28 published papers and co-authored 2 books.