Recent advances in the theory and practice of Logical Analysis of Data

Logical Analysis of Data (LAD) is a data analysis methodology introduced by Peter L. Hammer in 1986. LAD distinguishes itself from other classification and machine learning methods by the fact that it analyzes a significant subset of combinations of variables to describe the positive or negative nature of an observation and uses combinatorial techniques to extract models defined in terms of patterns. In recent years, the methodology has tremendously advanced through numerous theoretical developments and practical applications. In the present paper, we review the methodology and its recent advances, describe novel applications in engineering, finance, health care, and algorithmic techniques for some stochastic optimization problems, and provide a comparative description of LAD with well-known classification methods.