The present volume contains a selection of papers presented at the Eighth Conference of the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS) which was held in Cracow, Poland, July 16-19, 2002. All originally submitted papers were subject to a reviewing process by two independent referees, a procedure which resulted in the selection of the 53 articles presented in this volume. These articles relate to theoretical investigations as well as to practical applications and cover a wide range of topics in the broad domain of classifi­ cation, data analysis and related methods. If we try to classify the wealth of problems, methods and approaches into some representative (partially over­ lapping) groups, we find in particular the following areas: ? Clustering ? Cluster validation ? Discrimination ? Multivariate data analysis ? Statistical methods ? Symbolic data analysis ? Consensus trees and phylogeny ? Regression trees ? Neural networks and genetic algorithms ? Applications in economics, medicine, biology, and psychology. Given the international orientation of IFCS conferences and the leading role of IFCS in the scientific world of classification, clustering and data anal­ ysis, this volume collects a representative selection of current research and modern applications in this field and serves as an up-to-date information source for statisticians, data analysts, data mining specialists and computer scientists.