INTRODUCTION

Discovering hidden recurring patterns in observable behavioral processes is an important issue frequently faced by numerous advanced students and researchers across many research areas, such as, for example, psychology, biology, sports, robotics, media, finance, and medicine. As generally, the many powerful methods included in statistical software packages were not developed for this kind of analysis, discovering such patterns has proven a particularly difficult task, due to a lack of (a) adequate formalized models of the kinds of patterns to look for, (b) corresponding detection algorithms, and (c) their implementation in available software. The research described in this book is based on …