Mainstream data mining techniques significantly limit the role of human reasoning and insight. Likewise, in data visualization, the role of computational analysis is relatively small. The power demonstrated individually by these approaches to knowledge discovery suggests that somehow uniting the two could lead to increased efficiency and more...

IN TRADITIONAL COMPUTER GRAPHICS, 3D objects are created using highlevel surface representations such as polygonal meshes, NURBS (nonuniform rational B-spline) patches, or subdivision surfaces. Using this modeling paradigm, visual properties of surfaces, such as color, roughness, and reflectance, are described by means of a shading...

The setting and attainment of goals is a fundamental aspect of human decision making, which is manifest in the modern discipline of operational research by the technique of goal programming. Influences from the fields of mathematical programming and multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) can be found in goal programming, and it is...

Relationships matter. Ever since the dawn of time, when caveman Fred asked caveman Barney whether there was any work down at the quarry, human beings have always networked. We’re social creatures who like to reach out and talk to someone. As the Internet developed and grew in popularity, people rapidly took advantage of this new...

Secret writing for the transmission of messages has been practiced for nearly 4,000 years. According to David Kahn, the great historian of cryptology, the first example of an intentionally altered message can be traced to a tomb in ancient Egypt dated about 1900 b.c. In the 40 centuries since that...

Probability theory and fuzzy logic are the principal components of an array of methodologies for dealing with problems in which uncertainty and imprecision play important roles. In relation to probability theory, fuzzy logic is a new kid on the block. As such, it has been and continues to be, though to a lesser degree, an object of...

A constraint is a restriction on a space of possibilities; it is a piece of knowledge that narrows the scope of this space. Because constraints arise naturally in most areas of human endeavor, they are the most general means for formulating regularities that govern our computational, physical, biological, and social worlds. Some...

A major part of natural language processing now depends on the use of text data to build linguistic analyzers. We consider statistical, computational approaches to modeling linguistic structure. We seek to unify across many approaches and many kinds of linguistic structures. Assuming a basic understanding of natural language processing and/or...

This book is meant for research scholars, scientists and practitioners involved with the application of computer-based systems in critical applications. Ensuring dependability of systems used in critical applications is important due to the impact of their failures on human life, investment and environment. The individual aspects of...

The goal of this book is to provide an overview of the current state of knowledge of educational data mining (EDM). The primary goal of EDM is to use large-scale educational data sets to better understand learning and to provide information about the learning process. Although researchers have been studying human learning for over a...

Privacy is a basic human need, and losing privacy is perceived as an extremely threatening experience. Privacy embraces solitude, personal space, or intimacy with family and friends and as such, it is a ubiquitous and trans-cultural phenomenon. Privacy leverages well-being; without privacy we are at risk of becoming physically or...