This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th European Conference on Machine Learning, ECML 2003, held in Cavtat-Dubrovnik, Croatia in September 2003 in conjunction with PKDD 2003. The 40 revised full papers presented together with 4 invited contributions were carefully reviewed and, together with another 40 ones for PKDD 2003, selected from a total of 332 submissions. The papers address all current issues in machine learning including support vector machine, inductive inference, feature selection algorithms, reinforcement learning, preference learning, probabilistic grammatical inference, decision tree learning, clustering, classification, agent learning, Markov networks, boosting, statistical parsing, Bayesian learning, supervised learning, and multi-instance learning.

The proceedings of ECML/PKDD 2004 are published in two separate, albeit - tertwined,volumes:theProceedingsofthe 15thEuropeanConferenceonMac- ne Learning (LNAI 3201) and the Proceedings of the 8th European Conferences on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (LNAI 3202). The two conferences were co-located in Pisa, Tuscany, Italy during September 20–24, 2004. It was the fourth time in a row that ECML and PKDD were co-located. - ter the successful co-locations in Freiburg (2001), Helsinki (2002), and Cavtat- Dubrovnik (2003), it became clear that researchersstrongly supported the or- nization of a major scienti?c event about machine learning and data mining in Europe. We are happy to provide some statistics about the conferences. 581 di?erent papers were submitted to ECML/PKDD (about a 75% increase over 2003); 280 weresubmittedtoECML2004only,194weresubmittedtoPKDD2004only,and 107weresubmitted to both.Aroundhalfofthe authorsforsubmitted papersare from outside Europe, which is a clear indicator of the increasing attractiveness of ECML/PKDD. The Program Committee members were deeply involved in what turned out to be a highly competitive selection process. We assigned each paper to 3 - viewers, deciding on the appropriate PC for papers submitted to both ECML and PKDD. As a result, ECML PC members reviewed 312 papers and PKDD PC members reviewed 269 papers. We accepted for publication regular papers (45 for ECML 2004 and 39 for PKDD 2004) and short papers that were as- ciated with poster presentations (6 for ECML 2004 and 9 for PKDD 2004). The globalacceptance ratewas14.5%for regular papers(17% if we include the short papers).

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Ninth European Conference on Machine Learning, ECML-97, held in Prague, Czech Republic, in April 1997. This volume presents 26 revised full papers selected from a total of 73 submissions. Also included are an abstract and two papers corresponding to the invited talks as well as descriptions from four satellite workshops. The volume covers the whole spectrum of current machine learning issues.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Machine Learning, ECML 2001, held in Freiburg, Germany, in September 2001. The 50 revised full papers presented together with four invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 140 submissions. Among the topics covered are classifier systems, naive-Bayes classification, rule learning, decision tree-based classification, Web mining, equation discovery, inductive logic programming, text categorization, agent learning, backpropagation, reinforcement learning, sequence prediction, sequential decisions, classification learning, sampling, and semi-supervised learning.

This volume contains the proceedings of the Eurpoean Conference on Machine Learning (ECML-93), continuing the tradition of the five earlier EWSLs (European Working Sessions on Learning). The aim of these conferences is to provide a platform for presenting the latest results in the area of machine learning. The ECML-93 programme included invited talks, selected papers, and the presentation of ongoing work in poster sessions. The programme was completed by several workshops on specific topics. The volume contains papers related to all these activities. The first chapter of the proceedings contains two invited papers, one by Ross Quinlan and one by Stephen Muggleton on inductive logic programming. The second chapter contains 18 scientific papers accepted for the main sessions of the conference. The third chapter contains 18 shorter position papers. The final chapter includes three overview papers related to the ECML-93 workshops.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the Eighth European Conference on Machine Learning ECML-95, held in Heraclion, Crete in April 1995. Besides four invited papers the volume presents revised versions of 14 long papers and 26 short papers selected from a total of 104 submissions. The papers address all current aspects in the area of machine learning; also logic programming, planning, reasoning, and algorithmic issues are touched upon.

This book constitutes the refereed preceedings of the 13th European Conference on Machine Learning, ECML 2002, held in Helsinki, Finland in August 2002. The 41 revised full papers presented together with 4 invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. Among the topics covered are computational discovery, search strategies, Classification, support vector machines, kernel methods, rule induction, linear learning, decision tree learning, boosting, collaborative learning, statistical learning, clustering, instance-based learning, reinforcement learning, multiagent learning, multirelational learning, Markov decision processes, active learning, etc.

The biennial European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML) series is intended to provide an international forum for the discussion of the latest high quality research results in machine learning and is the major European scienti?c event in the ?eld. The eleventh conference (ECML 2000) held in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain from May 31 to June 2, 2000, has continued this tradition by attracting high quality papers from around the world. Scientists from 21 countries submitted 100 papers to ECML 2000, from which 20 were selected for long oral presentations and 23 for short oral presentations. This selection was based on the recommendations of at least two reviewers for each submitted paper. It is worth noticing that the number of papers reporting applications of machine learning has increased in comparison to past ECML conferences. We believe this fact shows the growing maturity of the ?eld. This volume contains the 43 accepted papers as well as the invited talks by Katharina Morik from the University of Dortmund and Pedro Domingos from the University of Washington at Seattle. In addition, three workshops were jointly organized by ECML 2000 and the European Network of Excellence - net: “Dealing with Structured Data in Machine Learning and Statistics W- stites”, “Machine Learning in the New Information Age” , and “Meta-Learning: Building Automatic Advice Strategies for Model Selection and Method Com- nation”.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th European Conference on Machine Learning, ECML 2005, jointly held with PKDD 2005 in Porto, Portugal, in October 2005. The 40 revised full papers and 32 revised short papers presented together with abstracts of 6 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 335 papers submitted to ECML and 30 papers submitted to both, ECML and PKDD. The papers present a wealth of new results in the area and address all current issues in machine learning.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th European Conference on Machine Learning, ECML 2007, held in Warsaw, Poland, September 2007, jointly with PKDD 2007. The 41 revised full papers and 37 revised short papers presented together with abstracts of four invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 592 abstracts submitted to both, ECML and PKDD. The papers present a wealth of new results in the area and address all current issues in machine learning.