News

BACKGROUND
Research on Knowledge discovery has attracted many people in recent
years and there is no doubt about its importance.  Many benchmark data
sets have been provided to the recent discovery challenge meetings
such as special sessions and workshops in KDD, PKDD, PAKDD and JSAI
conferences. Many researchers have tackled these data sets and shown
their results. These efforts have indicated potential feasibilities of
various knowledge discovery approaches. However, the diversity of the
approaches and the data sets is so large that the significance of
their resultant knowledge has not been extensively evaluated by the
close collaborations among the data analysts and the domain experts.

AIM
The aim of the workshop is to tackle a set of data with the close
collaborations among many analysts and an expert in the data domain
and to evaluate the possibility of discovering significant knowledge in
such an integrated knowledge discovery process. This data set for the
challenge is provided by a medical doctor, Prof. Shusaku Tsumoto
(Shimane Medical Univ.), who is the domain expert on the meningoen-
cephalitis diagnosis and on the supervisory board of this workshop.
The data set is obtained from the meningoencephalitis diagnosis activity
in a hospital. This data set has been selected by considering the
availability of the collaborative domain experts and the applicability of
the various approaches to the data.

This workshop strongly encourages that the participants perform the
following tasks under the presentation and the explanation of the data
set by the domain expert.

(1) Presentation of discovery approaches by analyst participants
(2) Presentation of preliminary results by analyst participants
(3) Presentation of evaluation and comments on the preliminary results
    by domain experts
(4) Presentation of the final results by analyst participants in the
    workshop meeting while accounting the above evaluation and
    comments given by the domain expert.
(5) Presentation of the final evaluation and comments by domain
    experts in the workshop meeting

The steps from (1) to (3) will be conducted by the direct and/or
electronic discussions before the workshop meeting. The steps (2) and
(3) will be repeated if further analyses are required. In step (5),
the evaluation will be made in terms of the significance of the
discovered knowledge in the data domain.

FOR MORE DETAILS
Please refer to the following URL.
http://wwwada.ar.sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp/pub/washio/jkdd/jkddcfp.html

DATA SET
The data set and its associated explanation are provided at the
following web site.
http://www.ar.sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp/jkdd01/menin.htm
This database was donated by Dr. Shusaku Tsumoto
(Department of Medical Informatics, Shimane Medicaln University).
E-mail: tsumoto@computer.org For possible questions on the data
and task description contact, Dr. Tsumoto.

SCHEDULE
To achieve the main aim of this workshop, the participants are
recommended to keep the following schedule before submitting the
paper for review. But it is not mandatory, and the participants are
allowed to submit the paper without any communication with the
experts if this is not feasible.

Schedule for steps from (1) to (3)
Oct. 28, 2000: First announcement of the workshop CFP and the data set
                    given by the domain expert
Dec.  8, 2000: Entry of analyst participants to the data set and
                    presentation of their preliminary results to the expert
                    (The participants should submit an extended abstract
                     paper to the PC chair, T. Washio. The extended abstract
                     paper should contain the oultine of the applied
                     techniques and the detailed mining results, and shoud
                     not be longer than 5 pages single-spaced in European
                     A4 or US leter size format. Submission in the PDF
                     format file via e-mail attachment to the address,
washio@sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp, is strongly encouraged.)
Dec. 31, 2000: Presentation of evaluation and comments by the expert
                    to the analysis participants via e-mail
Jan. 31, 2001: Deadline to submit papers by participants for review

Schedule after the paper submission
Acceptance Notification: February 28, 2001
Camera Ready due:        March 31, 2001
Workshop:                   May 22, 2001

Notice: The submitted papers will be reviewed not only based on the
relevance, significance, soundness and presentation of the approach
but also based on the significance of the discovered knowledge.

LOCATION OF WORKSHOP
Matsue City, Shimane Prefecture, Japan

ORGANIZATION
Program Chair:
  Takashi Washio (Osaka Univ.)
Workshop Supervisory Board:
  Shusaku Tsumoto (Shimane Medical Univ.)
Program Committee Members: (Alphabetical in Last Name)
  Petr Berka (Univ. Economics, Czech Republic)
  Hiroshi Motoda (Osaka Univ.)
  Takashi Okada (Kwansei Gakuin Univ.)
  Luc de Raedt (Univ. Freiburg, Germany)
  Einoshin Suzuki (Yokohama National Univ.)
  Takashi Washio (Osaka Univ.)
  Takahira Yamaguchi (Shizuoka Univ.)
  Ning Zhong (Maebashi Inst. Tech.)
  Jan Zytkow (UNC Charlotte, USA)

CONTACT INFORMATION
Takashi Washio
Institute for the Scientific and Industrial Research
(I.S.I.R), Osaka University
8-1, Mihogaoka, Ibarakishi, Osaka 567-0047, Japan
Phone : +81-6-6879-8541
Fax   : +81-6-6879-8544
E-mail: washio@sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp