This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the Seven h Confer- ence of the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS-2000), which was held in Namur, Belgium, July 11-14,2000. From the originally sub- mitted papers, a careful review process involving two reviewers per paper, led to the selection of 65 papers that were considered suitable for publication in this book. The present book contains original research contributions, innovative ap- plications and overview papers in various fields within data analysis, classifi- cation, and related methods. Given the fast...