This book provides clear explanatory text, illustrative mathematics and algorithms, demonstrations of the iterative process, pseudocode, and well- developed examples for applications of the branch-and-bound paradigm to important problems in combinatorial data analysis. Supplementary material, such as computer programs, are provided on the world wide web. Dr. Brusco is an editorial board member for the Journal of Classification, and a member of the Board of Directors for the Classification Society of North America.