th Selected papers presented at the 18 Annual Conference of th~ German Classification Society GfKl (Gesellschaft fUr Klassifikation) are contained in this volume of 'Studies in Classification, Data Analysis, and Knowledge Or­ ganization'. The conference took place at the University of Oldenburg in 1994 under the general subject "From Data to Knowledge" and provided an international forum for participants from theory and practice. The interdisciplinary character of GfKI - although aspects concerning clas­ sification and related areas of data analysis are in the center of interest of the activities of the society - is one of the reasons that within a process entitled "From Data to Knowledge" emphasis was laid as well on theoret­ ical contributions as on applications in various fields including information systems and knowledge organization. More than 330 participants could choose their individual program from more than 130 presentations included in the scientific program of the conference.

Plenary and Semi Plenary Presentations.- Advances in Cluster Analysis Relevant to Marketing Research.- Representation of Statistical Structures, Classification and Prediction Using Multidimensional Scaling.- Null Models in Cluster Validation.- Classifying Space and Analysing the Consequences: Spatial Analysis of Health Data.- An Ordinal Model for Cluster Analysis - 15 Years in Retrospect.- An Overview and Recent Developments in Dual Scaling.- Gibbs Sampling in AR Models with Random Walk Priors.- Finding the Edge of a Poisson Forest with Inside and Outside Observations: The Discriminant Analysis Point of View.- Spatial Fibre and Surface Processes - Stereologicai Estimations and Applications.- Robustizing Mixture Analysis Using Model Weighting.- Evaluation of the First Life Table Published in 1888 in Japan.- Classification Related Results and Other Aspects of Data Analysis.- Incomplete Data Matrices and Tests on Randomly Missing Data.- Valuations and Hierarchizations.- Recent Developments in Multimode Clustering.- Gaussian Neural Networks Applied to the Cluster Analysis Problem.- Graph-Theoretic Models for Testing the Homogeneity of Data.- Least Squares Multidimensional Scaling with Transformed Distances.- Alternatives to Configurai Frequency Analysis.- Clustering Methods in Fuzzy Control.- The Excess Mass Approach and the Analysis of Multi-Modality.- Mode Extraction by Multivaiue Morphology for Cluster Analysis.- On the Longest Edge of the Minimal Spanning Tree.- Detection of Blocks in a Binary Matrix - A Bayesian Approach.- Spatial Data Analysis.- Detection of Spatial Discontinuities in Vegetation Data by a Moving Window Algorithm.- Spatial Clustering of Neurons by Hypergeometric Disjoint Statistics.- A New Approach of Regionalisation by Classifying HydrologicalQuantities.- The Index-of-Dispersion Test Revisited.- Comparing Spatio-Temporal Patterns from Defaunization Experiments in Marine Ecology.- Applications in Economics.- A Unifying Approach to Benefit Segmentation and Product Line Design Based on Rank Order Conjoint Data.- Classification and Representation Using Conjoint Data.- Overlapping Clustering of Statistical Software Packages for PC.- Scenario Analysis with BASICS - Testing the Representativity of the Results of the Dynamic Probability Adjustment of Scenario Components with the Help of Classification Methods.- Analysis of Sales Data: A Neural Net Approach.- Applications in Linguistics.- On the Definition of Inflection.- Computer-Aided Analysis of Vocabulary Acquisition.- Features and Tags.- Semanticaily Based Universal Definitions of Grammatical Agreement and Agreement Domain Universals: A Critical Evaluation.- Towards a Hypermedia, Multilingual, On-Line Resource System for LSP Users/Learners.- Applications in Medicine and Biology.- A New Methodologic Look at Describing the Performance of Diagnostic Classification Procedures in Medicine.- Xmed-DD: From Document Processing to Systematic Information Storage.- Ribosomai RNA Phylogeny Derived from a Correlation Model of Sequence Evolution.- SALBIDH2 - Modifications of the LBI-Method for Automated Lexicon-Based Indexing of Diagnoses.- Record Linkage of Anonymous Data by Control Numbers.- Information Systems and Knowledge Organization.- Processing Partial Information in Decision Support Systems.- Consistency Conditions for the Classification in LIS/CI.- Using Hypertext for Information Retrieval in STEP/EXPRESS Schemata.- Two Software Tools Supporting Enduser Oriented Information Retrieval in Physics.- From Verbal Data to Practical Knowledge.