This book provides professionals with a large selection of algorithms, kernels and solutions ready for implementation and suitable for standard pattern discovery problems in fields such as bioinformatics, text analysis and image analysis. It also serves as an introduction for students and researchers to the growing field of kernel-based pattern analysis, demonstrating with examples how to handcraft an algorithm or a kernel for a new specific application, and covering all the necessary conceptual and mathematical tools to do so.

This volume contains papers presented at the 17th Annual Conference on Le- ning Theory (previously known as the Conference on Computational Learning Theory) held in Ban?, Canada from July 1 to 4, 2004. The technical program contained 43 papers selected from 107 submissions, 3 open problems selected from among 6 contributed, and 3 invited lectures. The invited lectures were given by Michael Kearns on Game Theory, Automated Trading and Social Networks, Moses Charikar on Algorithmic Aspects of - nite Metric Spaces, and Stephen Boyd on Convex Optimization, Semide?nite Programming, and Recent...