Pour Ie cinquieme congres de la serie, COMPSTAT 82 reunit environ 500 participants d'origines scientifiques et geographiques tres variees, prouvant a l'evidence l'interet persis tant de la communaute scientifique pour tous les problemes de calculs statistiques. Le Comite de Programme charge de l'organisation scientifique du Congres etait com pose de: o S. Apelt (Republique democratique d'Allemagne) - A. Bj6rck (Suede) - H. Caussinus (France), President - Y. Escoufier (France) - A. de Falguerolles (France), Secretaire - J.W. Frane (U.S.A.) - J. Gordesch (Republique Federale d'Allemagne) - Th. Havranek (Tchechoslovaquie) - N. Lauro (Italie) - C. Millier (France) - R.J. Mokken (pays-Bas)- R. Tomassone (France) - D. Wishart (Royaume Uni) Ce Comite a decide d'augmenter Ie nombre des conferenciers invites, cherchant de la sorte une representation des diverses ecoles ainsi que l'introduction de nouveaux themes. La tache la plus difficile a ensuite ete de selectionner une soixantaine de contributions parmi 250 soumissions. La encore Ie Comite de Programme s'est efforce de favoriser des voies qui semblaient les plus nouvelles et a essaye de maintenir une bonne repartition scientifique et geographique. Cependant, comme dans les precedents congres COMPSTAT, il a donne la preference aux propositions clairement marquees simultanement du double aspect Statistique et Calcul. Dans bien des cas, ces deux aspects sont tres lies rendant en particulier difficile et peu pertinente toute classification fine des contributions.

Statistical computing provides the link between statistical theory and applied statistics. The content of the book covers all aspects of this link, from the development and implementation of new statistical ideas to user experiences and software evaluation. The proceedings should appeal to anyone working in statistics and using computers, whether in universities, industrial companies, government agencies, research institutes or as software developers

Proceedings of symposia held 1974-

Although no-one is, probably, too enthused about the idea, it is a fact that the development of most empirical sciences to a great extent depends on the development of data analysis methods and techniques, which, due to the necessity of application of computers for that purpose, actually means that it practically depends on the advancement and orientation of computer statistics. Every other year the International Association for Statistical Computing sponsors the organizition of meetings of individual s professiona77y involved in computational statistics. Since these meetings attract professionals from allover the world, they are a good sample for the estimation of trends in this area which some believe is a statistics proper while others claim it is computer science. It seems, though, that an increasing number of colleagues treat it as an independent scientific or at least technical discipline. This volume contains six invited papers, 41 contributed papers and, finally, two papers which are, formally, software descriptions, but it was agreed by the Program Committee that they should be included in a separate section entitled "Notes about new developments in statistical software", due to their special significance for current trends in computational statistics.

The papers assembled in this volume were presented at COMPSTAT 1988, the 8th biannual Symposium in Computational Statistics held under the auspices of the International Association for Statistical Computing. The current impact of computers on the theory and practice of statistics can be traced at many levels: on one level, the ubiquitous personal computer has made methods for explorative data analysis and display, rarely even described in conventional statistics textbooks, widely available. At another level, advances in computing power permit the development and application of statistical methods in ways that previously have been infeasible. Some of these methods, for example Bayesian methods, are deeply rooted in the philosophical basis of statistics, while others, for example dynamic graphics, present the classical statistical framework with quite novel perspectives. The contents of this volume provide a cross-section of current concerns and interests in computational statistics. A dominating topic is the application of artificial intelligence to statistics (and vice versa), where systems deserving the label" expert systems" are just beginning to emerge from the haze of good intentions with which they hitherto have been clouded. Other topics that are well represented include: nonparametric estimation, graphical techniques, algorithmic developments in all areas, projection pursuit and other computationally intensive methods. COMPSTAT symposia have been held biannually since 1974. This tradition has made COMPSTAT a major forum for advances in computational statistics with contributions from many countries in the world. Two new features have been introduced at COMPSTAT '88.