A text aimed at both geometers needing the tools of rational homotopy theory to understand and discover new results concerning various geometric subjects, and topologists who require greater breadth of knowledge about geometric applications of the algebra of homotopy theory.

This book spans the distance between algebraic descriptions of geometric objects and the rendering of digital geometric shapes based on algebraic models. These contrasting points of view inspire a thorough analysis of the key challenges and how they are met. The articles focus on important classes of problems: implicitization, classification, and intersection. Combining illustrative graphics, computations and review articles this book helps the reader gain a firm practical grasp of these subjects.

Sure to be influential, Watanabe's book lays the foundations for the use of algebraic geometry in statistical learning theory. Many models/machines are singular: mixture models, neural networks, HMMs, Bayesian networks, stochastic context-free grammars are major examples. The theory achieved here underpins accurate estimation techniques in the presence of singularities.

Algebraic & geometry methods have constituted a basic background and tool for people working on classic block coding theory and cryptography. Nowadays, new paradigms on coding theory and cryptography have arisen such as: Network coding, S-Boxes, APN Functions, Steganography and decoding by linear programming. Again understanding the underlying procedure and symmetry of these topics needs a whole bunch of non trivial knowledge of algebra and geometry that will be used to both, evaluate those methods and search for new codes and cryptographic applications. This book shows those methods in a self-contained form.

Ten years after the first Rennes international meeting on real algebraic geometry, the second one looked at the developments in the subject during the intervening decade - see the 6 survey papers listed below. Further contributions from the participants on recent research covered real algebra and geometry, topology of real algebraic varieties and 16thHilbert problem, classical algebraic geometry, techniques in real algebraic geometry, algorithms in real algebraic geometry, semialgebraic geometry, real analytic geometry. CONTENTS: Survey papers: M. Knebusch: Semialgebraic topology in the last ten years.- R. Parimala: Algebraic and topological invariants of real algebraic varieties.- Polotovskii, G.M.: On the classification of decomposing plane algebraic curves.- Scheiderer, C.: Real algebra and its applications to geometry in the last ten years: some major developments and results.- Shustin, E.L.: Topology of real plane algebraic curves.- Silhol, R.: Moduli problems in real algebraic geometry. Further contributions by: S. Akbulut and H. King; C. Andradas and J. Ruiz; A. Borobia; L. Br|cker; G.W. Brumfield; A. Castilla; Z. Charzynski and P. Skibinski; M. Coste and M. Reguiat; A. Degtyarev; Z. Denkowska; J.-P. Francoise and F. Ronga; J.M. Gamboa and C. Ueno; D. Gondard- Cozette; I.V. Itenberg; P. Jaworski; A. Korchagin; T. Krasinksi and S. Spodzieja; K. Kurdyka; H. Lombardi; M. Marshall and L. Walter; V.F. Mazurovskii; G. Mikhalkin; T. Mostowski and E. Rannou; E.I. Shustin; N. Vorobjov.

"... To sum up, this book helps to learn algebraic geometry in a short time, its concrete style is enjoyable for students and reveals the beauty of mathematics." --Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum