Springer Optimization and Its Applications – serie

Parallel Scientific Computing and Optimization introduces new developments in the construction, analysis, and implementation of parallel computing algorithms. This book presents 23 self-contained chapters, including survey chapters and surveys, written by distinguished researchers in the field of parallel computing. Each chapter is devoted to some aspects of the subject: parallel algorithms for matrix computations, parallel optimization, management of parallel programming models and data, with the largest focus on parallel scientific computing in industrial applications. This volume is intended for scientists and graduate students specializing in computer science and applied mathematics who are engaged in parallel scientific computing.

Handbook of Optimization in Medicine is devoted to examining the dramatic increase in the application of effective optimization techniques to the delivery of health care. The articles, written by experts from the areas of operations research, computer science, and medicine, focus on models and algorithms that have led to more efficient and sophisticated treatments of patients.Topics covered include: optimization in medical imaging, classification and data mining with medical applications, treatment of epilepsy and other brain disorders, treatment of head-and-neck, prostate, and other cancers using conventional conformal and intensity-modulated radiation therapy as well as proton therapy, treatment selection for breast cancer based on new classification schemes, optimization for the genome project, optimal timing of organ transplants.

This book, a result of the authors’ teaching and research experience in various universities and institutes over the past ten years, can be used as a textbook for an optimization course for graduates and senior undergraduates. It systematically describes optimization theory and several powerful methods, including recent results. For most methods, the authors discuss an idea’s motivation, study the derivation, establish the global and local convergence, describe algorithmic steps, and discuss the numerical performance. The book deals with both theory and algorithms of optimization concurrently. It also contains an extensive bibliography. Finally, apart from its use for teaching, Optimization Theory and Methods will be very useful as a research reference.

Customer-Oriented Optimization in Public Transportation develops models, results and algorithms for optimizing public transportation from a customer-oriented point of view. The methods used are based on graph-theoretic approaches and integer programming. The specific topics are all motivated by real-world examples which occurred in practical projects. An appendix summarizes some of the basics of optimization needed to interpret the material in the book.In detail, the topics the book covers in its three parts are as follows:1. Stop location. Does it make sense to open new stations along existing bus or railway lines? If yes, in which locations? The problem is modeled as a continuous covering problem. To solve it the author develops a finite dominating set and shows that efficient methods are possible if the special structure of the covering matrix is used.2. Delay management. Should a train wait for delayed feeder trains or should it depart in time? The author builds up two different integer programming models and a model based on project planning methods. Properties and solution methods are developed.3. Tariff planning. Part 3 deals with the design of zone tariff systems, in which the fare is determined by the number of zones used by the passengers. The author presents a model for this problem and approaches based on clustering theory.

In the field of nondifferentiable nonconvex optimization, one of the most intensely investigated areas is that of optimization problems involving multivalued mappings in constraints or as the objective function. This book focuses on the tremendous development in the field that has taken place since the publication of the most recent volumes on the subject. The new topics studied include the formulation of optimality conditions using different kinds of generalized derivatives for set-valued mappings (such as, for example, the coderivative of Mordukhovich), the opening of new applications (e.g., the calibration of water supply systems), or the elaboration of new solution algorithms (e.g., smoothing methods). The book is divided into three parts. The focus in the first part is on bilevel programming. The chapters in the second part contain investigations of mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints. The third part is on multivalued set-valued optimization. The chapters were written by outstanding experts in the areas of bilevel programming, mathematical programs with equilibrium (or complementarity) constraints (MPEC), and set-valued optimization problems.

Antanas ~ilinskas was born on January 5, 1946 in Lithuania. He graduated with a gold medal from 2nd Kaunas Gymnasium in 1963 and with a distinction diploma of Electrical Engineering from Kaunas University of Technology in 1968. His Ph. D. studies (aspirantur) at Lithuanian Academy of Sciences lasted from 1970 to 1973. The Candidate of Sciences (Ph. D. ) degree in Technical - bernetics (1973) has been received from Kaunas University of Technology. The Doctor of Mathematical Sciences degree (Habilitation, 1985) has been received from St. Petersburg (Leningrad) University. The title Senior Research Fellow (1980) has been conferred by the Presidium of Academy of Sciences, and the title Professor (1989) by Vilnius Pedagogical University. He has been awarded (with V. saltenis and G. Dzemyda) Lithuanian National Award for scientific achievements of 2001 for the research on "Efficient optimization methods and their applications". A. ~ilinskas joined the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics in 1973 starting with a position of junior research associate, worked as a senior - search associate reaching the highest rank of principal researcher which is his main position now. Apart from working in the research institute he was a lecturer at Vilnius Pedagogical University 1986-1988, where he founded a - partment of Informatics in 1988 and held a position of professor and head of this department 1988-1993. He worked later as a professor of this department until 2000.

Di?erential evolution is one of the most recent global optimizers. Discovered in 1995 it rapidly proved its practical e?ciency. This book gives you a chance to learn all about di?erential evolution. On reading it you will be able to pro?tably apply this reliable method to problems in your ?eld. Asforme,mypassionforintelligentsystemsandoptimizationbeganasfar back as during my studies at Moscow State Technical University of Bauman, the best engineering school in Russia. At that time, I was gathering material for my future thesis. Being interested in my work, the Mining School of Paris proposed that I write a dissertation in France. I hesitated some time over a choice, but my natural curiosity and taste for novelty ?nally prevailed. At ´ present, Docteur ` es science en informatique de l’EcoledesMinesdeParis,I am concentrating on the development of my own enterprise. If optimization is my vocation, my hobbies are mathematics and music. Although mathematics disciplines the mind, music is ?lled with emotions. While playing my favorite composition, I decided to write this book. The purpose of the book is to give, in a condensed but overview form, a description of di?erential evolution. In addition, this book makes accessible to a wide audience the fruits of my long research in optimization. Namely, I laid the foundation of the universal concept of search strategies design, suitable not only for di?erential evolution but for many other algorithms. Also, I introduced a principle of energetic selection, an e?cient method of hybridization, and advanced paralleling techniques.

In one sense, the problem of finding the densest packing of congruent circles in a square is easy to understand. But on closer inspection, this problem reveals itself to be an interesting challenge of discrete and computational geometry with all its surprising structural forms and regularities. This book summarizes results achieved in solving the circle packing problem over the past few years, providing the reader with a comprehensive view of both theoretical and computational achievements. Typically illustrations of problem solutions are shown, elegantly displaying the results obtained.Beyond the theoretically challenging character of the problem, the solution methods developed in the book also have many practical applications.Since the codes can be worked with directly, they will enable the reader to improve on them and solve problem instances that still remain challenging, or to use them as a starting point for solving related application problems.

This volume presents an extensive collection of contributions covering aspects of the exciting and important research field of data mining techniques in biomedicine. Coverage includes new approaches for the analysis of biomedical data; applications of data mining techniques to real-life problems in medical practice; comprehensive reviews of recent trends in the field. The book addresses incorporation of data mining in fundamental areas of biomedical research: genomics, proteomics, protein characterization, and neuroscience.

Set-valued analysis is an essential tool for the mathematical formulation of many real-life situations, e.g., equilibrium theory in mathematical economics. This work offers the first comprehensive treatment in book form of the fairly new subdiscipline of enlargements of maximal monotone operators, including several important new results in the field. In the last decades, with the development of nonsmooth optimization, effective algorithms have been developed to solve these kinds of problems, such as nonsmooth variational inequalities. Several of these methods, such as bundle methods for variational problems, are fully developed and analyzed in this book.The first chapters provide a self-contained review of the basic notions and fundamental results in set-valued analysis, including set convergence and continuity of set-valued mappings together with many important results in infinite-dimensional convex analysis, leading to the classical fixed point results due to Ekeland, Caristi and Kakutani. Next, an in-depth introduction to monotone operators is developed, emphasizing results related to maximality of subdifferentials and of sums of monotone operators. Building on this foundational material, the second part of the monograph contains new results (all of them established during the last decade) on the concept of enlargements of monotone operators, with applications to variational inequalities, bundle-type methods, augmented Lagrangian methods, and proximal point algorithms.

Optimization has become an essential tool in addressing the limitation of resources and need for better decision-making in the medical field. Both continuous and discrete mathematical techniques are playing an increasingly important role in understanding several fundamental problems in medicine.This volume presents a wide range of medical applications that can utilize mathematical computing. Examples include using an algorithm for considering the seed reconstruction problem in brachytherapy and using optimization-classification models to assist in the early prediction, diagnosis and detection of diseases. Discrete optimization techniques and measures derived from the theory of nonlinear dynamics, with analysis of multi-electrode electroencephalographic (EEG) data, assist in predicting impending epileptic seizures. Mathematics in medicine can also be found in recent cancer research. Sophisticated mathematical models and optimization algorithms have been used to generate treatment plans for radionuclide implant and external beam radiation therapy. Optimization techniques have also been used to automate the planning process in Gamma Knife treatment, as well as to address a variety of medical image registration problems.This work grew out of a workshop on optimization which was held during the 2005 CIM Thematic Term on Optimization in Coimbra, Portugal. It provides an overview of the state-of-the-art in optimization in medicine and will serve as an excellent reference for researchers in the medical computing community and for those working in applied mathematics and optimization.

The present book is based on results of scienti?c investigations and on the materials of special courses, o?ered for graduate and undergraduate students. The purpose of this book is to acquaint the reader with the developments in bilinear systems theory and its applications. Particular attention is paid to control of open physical processes functioning in a nonequilibrium mode. The text consists of eight chapters. Chapter 1 is concerned with the problems of systems analysis of bilinear processes. Chapter 2 solves the problem of optimal control of bilinear systems on the basis of di?er- tial geometry methods. Chapter 3 deals with the progress made in an adaptive estimation technique. Chapter 4 is devoted to the application of the Yang–Mills ?elds to investigation of nonlinear control problems. Chapter 5 considers intelligent sensors, used to examine weak signals. This chapter also describes and analyzes bilinear models of intelligent sensing elements. Chapter 6 illustrates control problems of a quantum system. Chapter 7 discusses the problems of control and identi?cation in systems with chaotic dynamics. Finally, Chapter 8 examines the c- trolled processes running in biomolecular systems. This book is directed to students, postgraduate students, and speci- ists engaged in the ?elds of control of physical processes, quantum and molecular computing, biophysics, and physical information science.

A recent significant innovation in mathematical sciences has been the progressive use of nonsmooth calculus, an extension of the differential calculus, as a key tool of modern analysis in many areas of mathematics, operations research, and engineering. Focusing on the study of nonsmooth vector functions, this book presents a comprehensive account of the calculus of generalized Jacobian matrices and their applications to continuous nonsmooth optimization problems and variational inequalities in finite dimensions.The treatment is motivated by a desire to expose an elementary approach to nonsmooth calculus by using a set of matrices to replace the nonexistent Jacobian matrix of a continuous vector function. Such a set of matrices forms a new generalized Jacobian, called pseudo-Jacobian. A direct extension of the classical derivative that follows simple rules of calculus, the pseudo-Jacobian provides an axiomatic approach to nonsmooth calculus, a flexible tool for handling nonsmooth continuous optimization problems.Illustrated by numerous examples of known generalized derivatives, the work may serve as a valuable reference for graduate students, researchers, and applied mathematicians who wish to use nonsmooth techniques and continuous optimization to model and solve problems in mathematical programming, operations research, and engineering. Readers require only a modest background in undergraduate mathematical analysis to follow the material with minimal effort.

This book is devoted to the study of scalar and asymptotic scalar derivatives and their applications to the study of some problems considered in nonlinear analysis, in geometry, and in applied mathematics. The notion of a scalar derivative is due to S. Z. Nemeth, ´ and the notion of an asymptotic scalar derivative is due to G. Isac. Both notions are recent, never considered in a book, and have interesting applications. About applications, we cite applications to the study of complementarity problems, to the study of xed points of nonlinear mappings, to spectral nonlinear analysis, and to the study of some interesting problems considered in differential geometry and other applications. A new characterization of monotonicity of nonlinear mappings is another remarkable application of scalar derivatives. A relation between scalar derivatives and asymptotic scalar derivatives, - alized by an inversion operator is also presented in this book. This relation has important consequences in the theory of scalar derivatives, and in some applications. For example, this relation permitted us a new development of the method of exceptional family of elements, introduced and used by G. Isac in complementarity theory. Now, we present a brief description of the contents of this book. Chapter 1 is dedicated to the study of scalar derivatives in Euclidean spaces.

This book aims to cover major methodological and theoretical developments in the ?eld of stochastic global optimization. This ?eld includes global random search and methods based on probabilistic assumptions about the objective function. We discuss the basic ideas lying behind the main algorithmic schemes, formulate the most essential algorithms and outline the ways of their theor- ical investigation. We try to be mathematically precise and sound but at the same time we do not often delve deep into the mathematical detail, referring instead to the corresponding literature. We often do not consider the most g- eral assumptions, preferring instead simplicity of arguments. For example, we only consider continuous ?nite dimensional optimization despite the fact that some of the methods can easily be modi?ed for discrete or in?nite-dimensional optimization problems. The authors’ interests and the availability of good surveys on particular topics have in uenced the choice of material in the book. For example, there are excellent surveys on simulated annealing (both on theoretical and - plementation aspects of this method) and evolutionary algorithms (including genetic algorithms). We thus devote much less attention to these topics than they merit, concentrating instead on the issues which are not that well d- umented in literature. We also spend more time discussing the most recent ideas which have been proposed in the last few years.

Agriculture has experienced a dramatic change during the past decades. The change has been structural and technological. Structural changes can be seen in the size of current farms; not long ago, agricultural production was organized around small farms, whereas nowadays the agricultural landscape is dominated by large farms. Large farms have better means of applying new technologies, and therefore technological advances have been a driving force in changing the farming structure. New technologies continue to emerge, and their mastery and use in requires that farmers gather more information and make more complex technological choices. In particular, the advent of the Internet has opened vast opportunities for communication and business opportunities within the agricultural com- nity. But at the same time, it has created another class of complex issues that need to be addressed sooner rather than later. Farmers and agricultural researchers are faced with an overwhelming amount of information they need to analyze and synthesize to successfully manage all the facets of agricultural production. This daunting challenge requires new and complex approaches to farm management. A new type of agricultural management system requires active cooperation among multidisciplinary and multi-institutional teams and ref- ing of existing and creation of new analytical theories with potential use in agriculture. Therefore, new management agricultural systems must combine the newest achievements in many scientific domains such as agronomy, economics, mathematics, and computer science, to name a few.

This volume summarizes and synthesizes an aspect of research work that has been done in the area of Generalized Convexity over the past few decades. Specifically, the book focuses on V-invex functions in vector optimization that have grown out of the work of Jeyakumar and Mond in the 1990's. The authors integrate related research into the book and demonstrate the wide context from which the area has grown and continues to grow.

Science is made of facts just as a house is made of bricks, but a collection of facts is no more science than a pile of bricks is a house. Henri Poincaré Theaimofthedisciplinesofpraxisisnottheoreticalknowledge. . . . Itistochangetheforms ofaction. . . . Aristotle Transportation systems consist not only of the physical and organizational e- ments that interact with each other to produce transportation opportunities, but also of the demand that takes advantage of such opportunities to travel from one place to another. This travel demand, in turn, is the result of interactions among the v- ious economic and social activities located in a given area. Mathematical models of transportation systems represent, for a real or hypothetical transportation s- tem, the demand ?ows, the functioning of the physical and organizational elements, the interactions between them, and their effects on the external world. Mathematical models and the methods involved in their application to real, large-scale systems are thus fundamental tools for evaluating and/or designing actions affecting the ph- ical elements (e. g. , a new railway) and/or organizational components (e. g. , a new timetable) of transportation systems. This book discusses the mathematical models that are used to analyze transpor- tion systems, presenting them as the result of a limited number of general assu- tions (theory). It also deals with the methods needed to make these models ope- tional, and with their application to transportation system project design and eva- ation. This ?eld of knowledge is known as transportation systems engineering.

Optimization has pervaded all spheres of human endeavor. Although op- mization has been practiced in some form or other from the early prehistoric era, this area has seen progressive growth during the last ?ve decades. M- ern society lives not only in an environment of intense competition but is also constrained to plan its growth in a sustainable manner with due concern for conservation of resources. Thus, it has become imperative to plan, design, operate, and manage resources and assets in an optimal manner. Early - proaches have been to optimize individual activities in a standalone manner, however,thecurrenttrendistowardsanintegratedapproach:integratings- thesis and design, design and control, production planning, scheduling, and control. The functioning of a system may be governed by multiple perf- mance objectives. Optimization of such systems will call for special strategies for handling the multiple objectives to provide solutions closer to the systems requirement. Uncertainty and variability are two issues which render op- mal decision making di?cult. Optimization under uncertainty would become increasingly important if one is to get the best out of a system plagued by uncertain components. These issues have thrown up a large number of ch- lenging optimization problems which need to be resolved with a set of existing and newly evolving optimization tools. Optimization theory had evolved initially to provide generic solutions to optimizationproblemsinlinear,nonlinear,unconstrained,andconstrained- mains. Theseoptimization problems wereoften called mathematical progr- mingproblemswithtwodistinctiveclassi?cations,namelylinearandnonlinear programming problems.

Financial globalization has increased the significance of methods used in the evaluation of country risk, one of the major research topics in economics and finance. Written by experts in the fields of multicriteria methodology, credit risk assessment, operations research, and financial management, this book develops a comprehensive framework for evaluating models based on several classification techniques that emerge from different theoretical directions. This book compares different statistical and data mining techniques, noting the advantages of each method, and introduces new multicriteria methodologies that are important to country risk modeling.Key topics include: (1) A review of country risk definitions and an overview of the most recent tools in country risk management, (2) In-depth analysis of statistical, econometric and non-parametric classification techniques, (3) Several real-world applications of the methodologies described throughout the text, (4) Future research directions for country risk assessment problems.This work is a useful toolkit for economists, financial managers, bank managers, operations researchers, management scientists, and risk analysts. Moreover, the book can also be used as a supplementary text for graduate courses in finance and financial risk management.

Over the past decade the financial and business environments have undergone significant changes. During the same period several advances have been made within the field of financial engineering, involving both the methodological tools as well as the application areas.This comprehensive edited volume discusses the most recent advances within the field of financial engineering, focusing not only on the description of the existing areas in financial engineering research, but also on the new methodologies that have been developed for modeling and addressing financial engineering problems.This book is divided into four major parts, each covering different aspects of financial engineering and modeling such as portfolio management and trading, risk management, applications of operation research methods, and credit rating models.Handbook of Financial Engineering is intended for financial engineers, researchers, applied mathematicians, and graduate students interested in real-world applications to financial engineering.

In trying to make a satisfactory decision when imprecise and multicriteria situations are involved, a decision maker has to use a fuzzy multicriteria decision making method. "Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Making" (MCDM) presents fuzzy multiattribute and multiobjective decision-making methodologies by distinguished MCDM researchers.In summarizing the concepts and results of the most popular fuzzy multicriteria methods, using numerical examples, this work examines all the fuzzy multicriteria methods recently developed, such as fuzzy AHP, fuzzy TOPSIS, interactive fuzzy multiobjective stochastic linear programming, fuzzy multiobjective dynamic programming, grey fuzzy multiobjective optimization, fuzzy multiobjective geometric programming, and more. Each of the 22 chapters includes practical applications along with new developments/results.This book may be used as a textbook in graduate operations research, industrial engineering, and economics courses. It will also be an excellent resource, providing new suggestions and directions for further research, for computer programmers, mathematicians, and scientists in a variety of disciplines where multicriteria decision making is needed.

On February 27 and 28 of 2006, the University of Arizona held a workshop entitled, “Decision Modeling and Behavior in Uncertain and Complex En- ronments,” sponsored by the Air Force O?ce of Scienti?c Research under a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant. The purpose of the workshop was to assemble preeminent researchers studying problems at the interface of behavioral and cognitive science, decision analysis, and operations research. This book is a compilation of 14 chapters based on the presentations given during the workshop. These contributions are grouped into four general areas, which describe in some detail the challenges in conducting novel research in this ?eld. Part One is concerned with the need for integrating decision analysis and behavioral models. Robert T. Clemen discusses how the ?elds of behavioral - search and decision analysis have diverged over time, and makes a compelling case to establish new links between the disciplines. He recommends leveraging lessons learned from behavioral studies within prescriptive decision analysis studies and evaluating the practical impact of those prescriptive techniques in helping decision makers achieve their objectives. Jenna L. Marquard and Stephen M. Robinson address eleven common “traps” that face decision model analysts and users. An understanding of these traps leads to an understanding of modeling features that either help or hurt the decision-making process. The authors link theory and practice by examining a set of case studies across a diverse array of model scenarios, and provide a checklist of recommendations for analysts confronted by these eleven traps.

This comprehensive work examines important recent developments and modern applications in the fields of optimization, control, game theory and equilibrium programming. In particular, the concepts of equilibrium and optimality are of immense practical importance affecting decision-making problems regarding policy and strategies, and in understanding and predicting systems in different application domains, ranging from economics and engineering to military applications. The book consists of 29 survey chapters written by distinguished researchers in the above areas.

A path player game is a new innovative type of game which considers network flow problems from the viewpoint of network owners. This strategy enables modeling real-world problems and has many practical applications.Key features:* Presents a rigorous exposition of the theoretical foundations of the concept of a path player game;* Suggests 18 practical open problems for future research in such areas as traffic planning, computation of equilibria, and optimization;* Examines potentials for games on polyhedra as well as integer versions of generalized Nash equilibria.Written clearly, with well-presented mathematics, this book is intended for graduate students, mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists.

This book proposes a uniform logic and probabilistic (LP) approach to risk estimation and analysis in engineering and economics. It covers the methodological and theoretical basis of risk management at the design, test, and operation stages of economic, banking, and engineering systems with groups of incompatible events (GIE). This edition includes new chapters providing a detailed treatment of scenario logic and probabilistic models for revealing bribes. It also contains clear definitions and notations, revised sections and chapters, an extended list of references, and a new subject index, as well as more than a hundred illustrations and tables which motivate the presentation.

This book, like its companion volume Nonlinear Optimization with Financial Applications, is an outgrowth of undergraduate and po- graduate courses given at the University of Hertfordshire and the University of Bergamo. It deals with the theory behind numerical methods for nonlinear optimization and their application to a range of problems in science and engineering. The book is intended for ?nal year undergraduate students in mathematics (or other subjects with a high mathematical or computational content) and exercises are provided at the end of most sections. The material should also be useful for postg- duate students and other researchers and practitioners who may be c- cerned with the development or use of optimization algorithms. It is assumed that readers have an understanding of the algebra of matrices and vectors and of the Taylor and mean value theorems in several va- ables. Prior experience of using computational techniques for solving systems of linear equations is also desirable, as is familiarity with the behaviour of iterative algorithms such as Newton’s methodfor nonlinear equations in one variable. Most of the currently popular methods for continuous nonlinear optimization are described and given (at least) an intuitive justi?cation. Relevant convergence results are also outlined and we provide proofs of these when it seems instructive to do so. This theoretical material is complemented by numerical illustrations which give a ?avour of how the methods perform in practice.

The present volume is a collective monograph devoted to applications of the optimal design theory in optimization and statistics. The chapters re?ect the topics discussed at the workshop “W-Optimum Design and Related Statistical Issues” that took place in Juan-les-Pins, France, in May 2005. The title of the workshop was chosen as a light-hearted celebration of the work of Henry Wynn. It was supported by the Laboratoire I3S (CNRS/Universit´ e de Nice, Sophia Antipolis), to which Henry is a frequent visitor. The topics covered partly re?ect the wide spectrum of Henry’s research - terests. Algorithms for constructing optimal designs are discussed in Chap. 1, where Henry’s contribution to the ?eld is acknowledged. Steepest-ascent - gorithms used to construct optimal designs are very much related to general gradientalgorithmsforconvexoptimization. Inthelasttenyears,asigni?cant part of Henry’s research was devoted to the study of the asymptotic prop- ties of such algorithms. This topic is covered by Chaps. 2 and 3. The work by Alessandra Giovagnoli concentrates on the use of majorization and stoch- tic ordering, and Chap. 4 is a hopeful renewal of their collaboration. One of Henry’s major recent interests is what is now called algebraic statistics, the application of computational commutative algebra to statistics, and he was partly responsible for introducing the experimental design sub-area, reviewed in Chap. 5. One other sub-area is the application to Bayesian networks and Chap. 6 covers this, with Chap. 7 being strongly related.

Data Mining in Agriculture represents a comprehensive effort to provide graduate students and researchers with an analytical text on data mining techniques applied to agriculture and environmental related fields. This book presents both theoretical and practical insights with a focus on presenting the context of each data mining technique rather intuitively with ample concrete examples represented graphically and with algorithms written in Matlab®. Examples and exercises with solutions are provided at the end of each chapter to facilitate the comprehension of the material. For each data mining technique described in the book variants and improvements of the basic algorithm are also given.