Symbolic Data Analysis and the SODAS Software

Symbolic data analysis is a relatively new field that provides arange of methods for analyzing complex datasets. Standardstatistical methods do not have the power or flexibility to makesense of very large datasets, and symbolic data analysis techniqueshave 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 dataand make predictions about future events. This book is the result of the work f a pan-European projectteam led by Edwin Diday following 3 years work sponsored byEUROSTAT. It includes a full explanation of the new SODASsoftware developed as a result of this project. The software andmethods described highlight the crossover between statistics andcomputer science, with a particular emphasis on data mining.