Formal Concept Analysis: A Useful Example of Modern Mathematics

We give impressions of a field of research that was started some 30 years ago under the name of "Formal Concept Analysis". It is a mathematical theory, based on algebraic structures such as complete lattices, with a spectrum of applications in data analysis and knowledge processing Although the theory is advanced and substantial, it finds more attention in computer science than in mathematics. Indeed, the field has some potential for supporting recent developments of structured knowledge representations. In our lecture, we introduce the very basic notions of the field, show the possibility of expressive graphical representations, discuss some applications and, eventually, demonstrate why the value of this development lies in its mathematical nature.