Olgierd Hryniewicz

This book presents ample, richly illustrated account on results and experience from a project, dealing with the analysis of data concerning behavior patterns on the Web. The advertising on the Web is dealt with, and the ultimate issue is to assess the share of the artificial, automated activity (ads fraud), as opposed to the genuine human activity. After a comprehensive introductory part, a full-fledged report is provided from a wide range of analytic and design efforts, oriented at: the representation of the Web behavior patterns, formation and selection of telling variables, structuring of the populations of behavior patterns, including the use of clustering, classification of these patterns, and devising most effective and efficient techniques to separate the artificial from the genuine traffic. A series of important and useful conclusions is drawn, concerning both the nature of the observed phenomenon, and hence the characteristics of the respective datasets, and theappropriateness of the methodological approaches tried out and devised. Some of these observations and conclusions, both related to data and to methods employed, provide a new insight and are sometimes surprising. The book provides also a rich bibliography on the main problem approached and on the various methodologies tried out.

This book presents ample, richly illustrated account on results and experience from a project, dealing with the analysis of data concerning behavior patterns on the Web. The advertising on the Web is dealt with, and the ultimate issue is to assess the share of the artificial, automated activity (ads fraud), as opposed to the genuine human activity.After a comprehensive introductory part, a full-fledged report is provided from a wide range of analytic and design efforts, oriented at: the representation of the Web behavior patterns, formation and selection of telling variables, structuring of the populations of behavior patterns, including the use of clustering, classification of these patterns, and devising most effective and efficient techniques to separate the artificial from the genuine traffic.A series of important and useful conclusions is drawn, concerning both the nature of the observed phenomenon, and hence the characteristics of the respective datasets, and theappropriateness of the methodological approaches tried out and devised. Some of these observations and conclusions, both related to data and to methods employed, provide a new insight and are sometimes surprising. The book provides also a rich bibliography on the main problem approached and on the various methodologies tried out.

The analysis of experimental data resulting from some underlying random process is a fundamental part of most scientific research. Probability Theory and Statistics have been developed as flexible tools for this analyis, and have been applied successfully in various fields such as Biology, Economics, Engineering, Medicine or Psychology. However, traditional techniques in Probability and Statistics were devised to model only a singe source of uncertainty, namely randomness. In many real-life problems randomness arises in conjunction with other sources, making the development of additional "softening" approaches essential. This book is a collection of papers presented at the 2nd International Conference on Soft Methods in Probability and Statistics (SMPS’2004) held in Oviedo, providing a comprehensive overview of the innovative new research taking place within this emerging field.