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Fun With Algorithms Introduction to the Proceedings The conference entitled ``FUN with Algorithms'' was held on the Island of Elba on the occasion of Fabrizio Luccio's 60th birthday. The title of the meeting was chosen to reflect the main lesson we have learned from Fabrizio, that doing serious research can and should be a truly enjoyable experience. The spirit of the lesson and of the meeting is best exemplified by the following quotes: ``Indeed pleasure has probably been the main goal all along. But I hesitate to admit it, becouse computer scientists want to maintain their image as hard working individuals who deserve high salaries. Sooner or later society will realize that certain kinds of hard work are in fact admirable even though they are more fun than just about anything else.'' (Knuth, D. E.: The Stanford Graph Base: A Platform for Combinatorial Computing) ``No one should ever be bored ... and I have always had plenty of leisure for the researchs that have been the one great permanent happiness of my life.'' (Hardy, G. H.: A Mathematician's Apology) ``Ogni sano intelletto sarebbe in fastidio non ragionando di altri chasi che di merchatantia, onde nello stesso presente capitolo intendo mostrare alchuno chaso di dilecto e quali sono posti sopra i numeri ... alchuno chaso di dilecto acció che l'animo sia alquanto placato. [Any healthy intellect would be bothered if it was to reason solely for business, hence I intend to show in this chapter situations to have fun with numbers ... situations of fun so that the soul may be content.] (Pier Maria Calandri: ``Tractaco d'abbacho'') This lesson has a particular place in all aspects of design and analysis of algorithms and data structures, the field in which Fabrizio taught many young researchers (including the writers of this Introduction) the rudiments, the principles, and the fun of scientific research. The focus of the conference was on the design, analysis, and use of algorithms and data structures. In addition to the three organizers, the program committee was composed of top researchers in algorithm design and analysis who clearly have fun with their work: Giorgio Ausiello (Univ. of Rome, Italy) Shimon Even (Technion Univ., Israel) Zvi Galil (Columbia Univ., USA) Fabrizio Luccio (Univ. of Pisa, Italy) Jurg Nievergelt (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) David Peleg (Weizmann Institute, Israel) Kurt Mehlhorn (MPI of Saarbrucken, Germany) Franco Preparata (Brown Univ., USA) Arnold Rosenberg (Univ. of Massachusetts, USA) Although we organized this conference as a way of celebrating Fabrizio's birthday, we wanted to keep this fact a secret from him, revealing it only in the final Program Announcement and in the Call for Participation. Despite the large number of people involved, the plan worked: it was a surprise for him. This also allowed us to put Fabrizio to work as a program committee member, hence his name on the above list. The papers selected by the committee for the contributed section provided amusing, witty but nonetheless original and scientifically profound contributions to the area. The topics covered included fun with: combinatorial algorithms distributed algorithms geometric algorithms numerical algorithms parallel algorithms randomized algorithms Several committee members had agreed to give invited talks focusing on their current areas of scientific speculation and research: Shimon Even, Fabrizio Luccio, Jurg Nievergelt, David Peleg, Kurt Mehlhorn, Franco Preparata, and Arnie Rosenberg. The Conference took place on the Island of Elba, famous for its white sand, deep blue sea, fascinating nature, and Napoleonic past. The beautiful setting enhanced rather than distracted the immersion into scientifically challenging problems and discussions. Although this volume contains only the written reports of all contributed and invited talks, we are confident that it will convey to the reader also some of the ``dilecto accir che l'animo sia alquanto placato.'' Elena Lodi, Linda Pagli, and Nicola Santoro