This book provides a selection of pioneering papers or extracts ranging from Pascal (1654) to R.A. Fisher (1930). The editors'annotations put the articles in perspective for the modern reader. A special feature of the book is the large number of translations, nearly all made by the authors. There are several reasons for studying the history of statistics: intrinsic interest in how the field of statistics developed, learning from often brilliant ideas and not reinventing the wheel, and livening up general courses in statistics by reference to important contributors.

Over the last few decades, important progresses in the methods of sampling have been achieved. This book draws up an inventory of new methods that can be useful for selecting samples. Forty-six sampling methods are described in the framework of general theory. The algorithms are described rigorously, which allows implementing directly the described methods. This book is aimed at experienced statisticians who are familiar with the theory of survey sampling.

The last twenty years have witnessed a significant growth of interest in optimal factorial designs, under possible model uncertainty, via the minimum aberration and related criteria. This book gives, for the first time in book form, a comprehensive and up-to-date account of this modern theory. Many major classes of designs are covered in the book. While maintaining a high level of mathematical rigor, it also provides extensive design tables for research and practical purposes. Apart from being useful to researchers and practitioners, the book can form the core of a graduate level course in experimental design.

Dealing with methods for sampling from posterior distributions and how to compute posterior quantities of interest using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) samples, this book addresses such topics as improving simulation accuracy, marginal posterior density estimation, estimation of normalizing constants, constrained parameter problems, highest posterior density interval calculations, computation of posterior modes, and posterior computations for proportional hazards models and Dirichlet process models. The authors also discuss model comparisons, including both nested and non-nested models, marginal likelihood methods, ratios of normalizing constants, Bayes factors, the Savage-Dickey density ratio, Stochastic Search Variable Selection, Bayesian Model Averaging, the reverse jump algorithm, and model adequacy using predictive and latent residual approaches. The book presents an equal mixture of theory and applications involving real data, and is intended as a graduate textbook or a reference book for a one-semester course at the advanced masters or Ph.D. level. It will also serve as a useful reference for applied or theoretical researchers as well as practitioners.

This book is intended for students and practitioners who have had a calculus-based statistics course and who have an interest in safety considerations such as reliability, strength, and duration-of-load or service life. Many persons studying statistical science will be employed professionally where the problems encountered are obscure, what should be analyzed is not clear, the appropriate assumptions are equivocal, and data are scant. In this book there is no disclosure with many of the data sets what type of investigation should be made or what assumptions are to be used.

Smoothing methods are an active area of research. In this book, the author presents a comprehensive treatment of penalty smoothing under a unified framework. Methods are developed for (i) regression with Gaussian and non-Gaussian responses as well as with censored life time data; (ii) density and conditional density estimation under a variety of sampling schemes; and (iii) hazard rate estimation with censored life time data and covariates. Extensive discussions are devoted to model construction, smoothing parameter selection, computation, and asymptotic convergence. Most of the computational and data analytical tools discussed in the book are implemented in R, an open-source clone of the popular S/S- PLUS language.

The study of copulas and their role in statistics is a new but vigorously growing field. In this book the student or practitioner of statistics and probability will find discussions of the fundamental properties of copulas and some of their primary applications. The applications include the study of dependence and measures of association, and the construction of families of bivariate distributions. This book is suitable as a text or for self-study.

Many texts are excellent sources of knowledge about individual statistical tools, but the art of data analysis is about choosing and using multiple tools. Instead of presenting isolated techniques, this text emphasizes problem solving strategies that address the many issues arising when developing multivariable models using real data and not standard textbook examples. It includes imputation methods for dealing with missing data effectively, methods for dealing with nonlinear relationships and for making the estimation of transformations a formal part of the modeling process, methods for dealing with "too many variables to analyze and not enough observations," and powerful model validation techniques based on the bootstrap. This text realistically deals with model uncertainty and its effects on inference to achieve "safe data mining".

Now available in paperback, this book provides a comprehensive account of survey sampling theory and methodology suitable for students and researchers across a variety of disciplines. It shows how statistical modeling is a vital component of the sampling process and in the choice of estimation technique. The first textbook that systematically extends traditional sampling theory with the aid of a modern model assisted outlook. Covers classical topics as well as areas where significant new developments have taken place.

Now available in paperback, this book is organized in a way that emphasizes both the theory and applications of the various variance estimating techniques. Results are often presented in the form of theorems; proofs are deleted when trivial or when a reference is readily available. It applies to large, complex surveys; and to provide an easy reference for the survey researcher who is faced with the problem of estimating variances for real survey data.