Correspondence Analysis and Related Methods - CARME 2003 - is the fourth in a series of conferences on multidimensional graphical techniques and the analysis of large sets of categorical data.

Previous conferences held at the Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung at the University of Cologne, Germany, were:

May 1991: Correspondence Analysis in the Social Sciences
May 1995: Visualisation of Categorical Data
May 1999: Large Scale Data Analysis

Following the success of these three conferences a fourth conference is planned for the year 2003, where we return to the original theme of the conference, correspondence analysis, a versatile, interdisciplinary statistical method made popular in France and now well established throughout the world. The year 2003 marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Analyse des Données, by Jean-Paul Benzécri, published in Paris in 1973, and we shall celebrate this anniversary at the conference. The venue of CARME 2003 is the new campus of the Pompeu Fabra University, in the Catalonian capital of Barcelona, on the Mediterranean coastline.

The objective of this conference is to spotlight the very latest research in correspondence analysis, and discuss future developments. We aim to bring together theoretical and applied researchers in all the areas where correspondence analysis is currently used, notably sociology, psychology, education, ecology, archeology, geology, linguistics, philosophy, genetics, biomedical research, health economics, marketing and management. Interdisciplinary contributions will be particularly welcome.

Themes of the conference include all forms of correspondence analysis and related fields, including visualisation of categorical data:

• Simple correspondence analysis
• Multiple correspondence analysis
• Joint correspondence analysis
• Multiway correspondence analysis
• Canonical correspondence analysis
• Nonsymmetrical correspondence analysis
• Dual scaling
• Optimal scaling
• Homogeneity analysis
• Multidimensional scaling of categorical data
• Biplots of categorical data
• Visualisation of compositional data
• Correspondence analysis in the social sciences
• Correspondence analysis in ecology and the environmental sciences
• Correspondence analysis in the health sciences
• Correspondence analysis in marketing research and management

We plan a three-day program, preceded by a day consisting of social excursions in Barcelona, either visiting the main attractions of the city such as the famous Parc Güell of Gaudí and the Sagrada Familia church or visiting the Mediterranean coastline of Catalonia. Registration fee will be 100 euros, with a reduced fee of 50 euros for fulltime students, and the conference dinner will be 60 euros. See "Timetable" for more details about submitting papers and a provisional pre-registration form until formal registration opens the first week of March 2003.