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...