There is generalagreementthat the quality of Machine Learning and Kno- edgeDiscoveryoutputstronglydependsnotonlyonthequalityofsourcedata andsophisticationoflearningalgorithms, butalsoonadditional, task/domain speci?c input provided by domain experts for the particular session. There is however less agreement on whether, when and how such input can and should e?ectively be formalized and reused as explicit prior knowledge. In the ?rst ofthe two parts into which the book is divided, we aimed to - vestigate current developments and new insights on learning techniques that exploit prior knowledge and on promising application areas. With respect to application areas, experiments on bio-informatics / medical and Web data environments are described. This part comprises a selection of extended c- tributionstothe workshopPrior Conceptual Knowledge inMachine Learning and Knowledge Discovery (PriCKL), held at ECML/PKDD 2007 18th - ropean Conference on Machine Learning and 11th European Conference on PrinciplesandPracticeofKnowledgeDiscoveryinDatabases).Theworkshop is part of the activities of the "SEVENPRO - Semantic Virtual Engineering for Product Design" project of the European 6th Framework Programme. The second part of the book has been motivated by the speci?cation of Web 2.0. We observe Web 2.0 as a powerful means of promoting the Web as a social medium, stimulating interpersonal communication and fostering the sharing of content, information, semantics and knowledge among people. Chapters are authored by participants to the workshop Web Mining 2.0, heldatECML/PKDD2007.Theworkshophostedresearchontheroleofweb mininginandfortheWeb2.0.Itispartoftheactivitiesoftheworkinggroups "UbiquitousData-InteractionandDataCollection"and"HumanComputer Interaction and Cognitive Modelling" of the Coordination Action "KDubiq - Knowledge Discovery in Ubiquitous Environments" of the European 6th Framework Programme.

There is generalagreementthat the quality of Machine Learning and Kno- edgeDiscoveryoutputstronglydependsnotonlyonthequalityofsourcedata andsophisticationoflearningalgorithms,butalsoonadditional,task/domain speci?c input provided by domain experts for the particular session. There is however less agreement on whether, when and how such input can and should e?ectively be formalized and reused as explicit prior knowledge. In the ?rst ofthe two parts into which the book is divided, we aimed to - vestigate current developments and new insights on learning techniques that exploit prior knowledge and on promising application areas. With respect to application areas, experiments on bio-informatics / medical and Web data environments are described. This part comprises a selection of extended c- tributionstothe workshopPrior Conceptual Knowledge inMachine Learning and Knowledge Discovery (PriCKL), held at ECML/PKDD 2007 18th - ropean Conference on Machine Learning and 11th European Conference on PrinciplesandPracticeofKnowledgeDiscoveryinDatabases).Theworkshop is part of the activities of the "SEVENPRO - Semantic Virtual Engineering for Product Design" project of the European 6th Framework Programme. The second part of the book has been motivated by the speci?cation of Web 2.0. We observe Web 2.0 as a powerful means of promoting the Web as a social medium, stimulating interpersonal communication and fostering the sharing of content, information, semantics and knowledge among people. Chapters are authored by participants to the workshop Web Mining 2.0, heldatECML/PKDD2007.Theworkshophostedresearchontheroleofweb mininginandfortheWeb2.0.Itispartoftheactivitiesoftheworkinggroups "UbiquitousData-InteractionandDataCollection"and"HumanComputer Interaction and Cognitive Modelling" of the Coordination Action "KDubiq - Knowledge Discovery in Ubiquitous Environments" of the European 6th Framework Programme.

Data analysis, machine learning and knowledge discovery are research areas at the intersection of computer science, artificial intelligence, mathematics and statistics. They cover general methods and techniques that can be applied to a vast set of applications such as web and text mining, marketing, medicine, bioinformatics and business intelligence. This volume contains the revised versions of selected papers in the field of data analysis, machine learning and knowledge discovery presented during the 36th annual conference of the German Classification Society (GfKl). The conference was held at the University of Hildesheim (Germany) in August 2012.

Thisyear'svolumeofAdvancesinWebMiningandWebUsageAnalysiscontains thepostworkshopproceedingsofajointevent,the9thInternationalWorkshopon Knowledge Discovery from the Web (WEBKDD 2007) and the First SNA-KDD Workshop on Social Network Analysis (SNA-KDD 2007). The joint workshop on Web Mining and Social Network Analysis took place at the ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD). It attracted 23 submissions, of which 14 were accepted for presentation at the workshop. Eight of them have been extended for inclusion in this volume. WEBKDD is one of the most traditional workshops of the ACM SIGKDD internationalconference, under the auspices of which it has been organizedsince 1999. The strong interest for knowledge discovery in the Web, fostered not least by WEBKDD itself, has led to solutions for many problems in the Web's p- mature era. In the meanwhile, the Web has stepped into a new era, where it is experienced as a social medium, fostering interaction among people, enabling and promoting the sharing of knowledge, experiences and applications, char- terized by group activities, community formation, and evolution. The design of Web 2. 0 re?ects the socialcharacterof the Web, bringing new potential and new challenges. The 9th WEBKDD was devoted to the challenges and opportunities of mining for the social Web and promptly gave rise to the joint event with the First Workshop on Social Network Analysis (SNA-KDD). Social network research has advanced signi?cantly in the last few years, strongly motivated by the prevalence of online social websites and a variety of large-scale o?ine social network systems.

This volume contains the papers presented at NLDB 2008, the 13th Inter- tional Conference on Natural Language and Information Systems, held June 25-27,2008.It also containssome of the best researchproposalsas submitted to theNLDB2008doctoralsymposiumheldonJune24,2008.Theprogrammealso includes three invited talks covering the main perspectives of the application of naturallanguageto informationsystems: the wayhumansprocess, communicate and understand natural language, what are the implications and challenges - wardssemanticsearchforthenewWebgeneration, hownaturallanguageapplies to the well-established database way of querying as a means to unlock data and information for end users. We received 68 papers as regular papers for the main conference and 14 short papers for the doctoral symposium. Each paper for the main conference was assigned four reviewers based on the preferences expressed by the Program Committee members. We ensured that every paper had at least two reviewers that expressedinterest in reviewing it or indicated that they could reviewit. We ensured that each paper got at least three reviews. As a result, only 10% of the papers were reviewed by three reviewers. The Conference Chair and the two Program Committee Co-chairs acted as Meta-Reviewers.Eachofthemtookroughly1/3ofthepapers(obviouslyrespe- ing con?icts of interest), for which s/he was responsible. This included studying the reviews, launching discussions and asking for clari?cations whenever nec- sary, as well as studying the papers whenever a need for an informed additional opinion arose or when the reviewers' notes did not allow for a decision.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Mining Web Data, WEBKDD 2006, held in Philadelphia, PA, USA in August 2006 in conjunction with the 12th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, KDD 2006.

The 13 revised full papers presented together with a detailed preface went through two rounds of reviewing and improvement and were carefully selected for inclusion in the book. The enhanced papers show new technologies from areas like adaptive mining methods, stream mining algorithms, techniques for the Grid, especially flat texts, documents, pictures and streams, usability, e-commerce applications, personalization, and recommendation engines.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed and extended post-proceedings of the joint European Web Mining Forum, EWMF 2005, and the International Workshop on Knowledge Discovery and Ontologies, KDO 2005, held in association with ECML/PKDD in Porto, Portugal in October 2005. The 10 revised full papers presented together with one invited paper and one particularly fitting contribution from KDO 2004 were carefully selected for inclusion in the book.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Mining Web Data, WEBKDD 2005, held in Chicago, IL, USA in August 2005 in conjunction with the 11th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, KDD 2005. The nine revised full papers presented together with a detailed preface went through two rounds of reviewing and improvement and were carefully selected for inclusion in the book.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, PKDD 2006.

The book presents 36 revised full papers and 26 revised short papers together with abstracts of 5 invited talks, carefully reviewed and selected from 564 papers submitted. The papers offer a wealth of new results in knowledge discovery in databases and address all current issues in the area.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed joint post-proceedings of nine workshops held as part of the 10th International Conference on Extending Database Technology, EDBT 2006, held in Munich, Germany in March 2006.

The 70 revised full papers presented were selected from numerous submissions during two rounds of reviewing and revision. In accordance with the topical focus of the respective workshops, the papers are organized in sections on database technology in general (EDBT PhD Workshop), database technologies for handling XML information on the Web (DataX 2006), inconsistency and incompleteness in databases (IIDB 2006), information integration in healthcare (IIHA 2006), semantics of sequence and time dependent data (ICSNW 2006), query languages and query processing (QLQP 2006), pervasive information management (PIM 2006), pattern representation and management (PaRMa 2006), and reactivity on the Web.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th European Conference on Machine Learning, ECML 2006, held, jointly with PKDD 2006. The book presents 46 revised full papers and 36 revised short papers together with abstracts of 5 invited talks, carefully reviewed and selected from 564 papers submitted. The papers present a wealth of new results in the area and address all current issues in machine learning.

In the last years, research on Web mining has reached maturity and has broadened in scope. Two different but interrelated research threads have emerged, based on the dual nature of the Web: - The Web is a practically in?nite collection of documents: The acquisition and - ploitation of information from these documents asks for intelligent techniques for information categorization, extraction and search, as well as for adaptivity to the interests and background of the organization or person that looks for information. - The Web is a venue for doing business electronically: It is a venue for interaction, information acquisition and service exploitation used by public authorities, n- governmental organizations, communities of interest and private persons. When observed as a venue for the achievement of business goals, a Web presence should be aligned to the objectives of its owner and the requirements of its users. This raises the demand for understandingWeb usage, combining it with other sources of knowledge inside an organization, and deriving lines of action. ThebirthoftheSemanticWebatthebeginningofthedecadeledtoacoercionofthetwo threadsintwoaspects: (i)theextractionofsemanticsfromtheWebtobuildtheSemantic Web;and(ii)theexploitationofthesesemanticstobettersupportinformationacquisition and to enhance the interaction for business and non-business purposes. Semantic Web mining encompasses both aspects from the viewpoint of knowledge discovery

1 WorkshopTheme Data mining as a discipline aims to relate the analysis of large amounts of user data to shed light on key business questions. Web usage mining in particular, a relatively young discipline, investigates methodologies and techniques that - dress the unique challenges of discovering insights from Web usage data, aiming toevaluateWebusability, understandtheinterestsandexpectationsofusersand assess the e?ectiveness of content delivery. The maturing and expanding Web presents a key driving force in the rapid growth of electronic commerce and a new channel for content providers. Customized o?ers and content, made possible by discovered knowledge about the customer, are fundamental for the establi- ment of viable e-commerce solutions and sustained and e?ective content delivery in noncommercial domains. Rich Web logs provide companies with data about their online visitors and prospective customers, allowing microsegmentation and personalized interactions. While Web mining as a domain is several years old, the challenges that characterize data analysis in this area continue to be formidable. Though p- processing data routinely takes up a major part of the e?ort in data mining, Web usage data presents further challenges based on the di?culties of assigning data streams to unique users and tracking them over time. New innovations are required to reliably reconstruct sessions, to ascertain similarity and di?erences between sessions, and to be able to segment online users into relevant groups

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Mining Web Data, WEBKDD 2001 held in San Francisco, CA, USA in August 2001.The seven revised full papers went through two rounds of reviewing an improvement. The book addresses key issues in mining Web log data for e-commerce. The papers are devoted to predicting user access, recommender systems and access modeling, and acquiring and modeling data and patterns.

After the advent of data mining and its successful application on conventional data, Web-related information has been an appropriate and increasingly popular target of knowledge discovery. Depending on whether the data used in the knowledge discovery process concerns the Web itself in terms of content or the usage of the content, one distinguishes between Web content mining and Web usage mining.This book is the first one entirely devoted to Web usage mining. It originates from the WEBKDD'99 Workshop held during the 1999 KDD Conference. The ten revised full papers presented together with an introductory survey by the volume editors documents the state of the art in this exciting new area. The book presents topical sections on Modeling the User, Discovering Rules and Patterns of Navigation, and Measuring interestingness in Web Usage Mining.

The three volume set LNAI 9284, 9285, and 9286 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the European Conference on Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases, ECML PKDD 2015, held in Porto, Portugal, in September 2015. The 131 papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 483 submissions. These include 89 research papers, 11 industrial papers, 14 nectar papers, 17 demo papers. They were organized in topical sections named: classification, regression and supervised learning; clustering and unsupervised learning; data preprocessing; data streams and online learning; deep learning; distance and metric learning; large scale learning and big data; matrix and tensor analysis; pattern and sequence mining; preference learning and label ranking; probabilistic, statistical, and graphical approaches; rich data; and social and graphs. Part III is structured in industrial track, nectar track, and demo track.