Automated Local Linear Embedding with an application to microarray data

Permission is herewith granted to Università degli studi di Bologna to circulate and to have copied for non-commercial purposes, at its discretion, the above title upon the request of individuals or institutions. iii Acknowledgements The essential work reported in this thesis was carried out during my visiting periods at the University of Glasgow in the Autumn 2005 and at the Lancaster University in May 2006. I would like to express my gratitude to Ernst Wit for being my supervisor and for his precious support and his helpful advices during my work. I would like to give my sincere and warm thanks to Angela Montanari, Cinzia Viroli and Marilena Pillati for their supervision and guidance of my PhD thesis and for their helpful criticism on this work. It has been a pleasure to exchange ideas with the other PhD student at the University of Glasgow and Bologna. Finally, I would like to give many thanks to my husband, my parents and my friends for their patient and for supporting me during the three years of my PhD period.