In science, industry, public administration and documentation centres, large amounts of data and information are collected which must be analyzed, ordered, visualized, classified and stored efficiently in order to be useful for practical applications. This volume contains 50 selected theoretical and applied papers presenting ideas, methods, models and systems which can be used for this purpose. It combines papers and strategies from two main areas of research - theoretical and applied. Mathematical and statistical methods, which allow quantitative analysis of data are detailed, suggestions are made as to how to provide strategies for classifying objects or to make exploratory searches for interesting structures and means are suggested by which to construct finely detailed graphical displays of large arrays of data. Papers related to information sciences, informatics and data bank systems provide descriptions of powerful tools for representing, modelling, storing and retrieving facts, data and knowledge characterized by qualitative descriptors, semantic relations, or linguistic concepts.
A section relevant to applied problems from biology, medicine, archaeology, industry and administration is included.