The year 2001 marks the centenary of Biometrika, one of the world's leading academic journals in statistical theory and methodology. In celebration of this, the book brings together two sets of papers from the journal. The first comprises seven specially commissioned articles (authors: D.R. Cox, A.C. Davison, Anthony C. Atkinson and R.A. Bailey, David Oakes, Peter Hall, T.M.F. Smith, and Howell Tong). These articles review the history of the journal and the most important contributions made by appearing in the journal in a number of important areas of statitisical activity, including general theory and methodology, surveys and time sets. In the process the papers describe the general development of statistical science during the twentieth century. The second group of ten papers are a selection of particularly seminal articles form the journal's first hundred years. The book opens with an introduction by the editors Professor D.M. Titterington and Sir David Cox.

Modern statistical methods use complex, sophisticated models that can lead to intractable computations. Saddlepoint approximations can be the answer. Written from the user's point of view, this book explains in clear language how such approximate probability computations are made, taking readers from the very beginnings to current applications. The core material is presented in chapters 1-6 at an elementary mathematical level. Chapters 7-9 then give a highly readable account of higher-order asymptotic inference. Later chapters address areas where saddlepoint methods have had substantial impact: multivariate testing, stochastic systems and applied probability, bootstrap implementation in the transform domain, and Bayesian computation and inference. No previous background in the area is required. Data examples from real applications demonstrate the practical value of the methods. Ideal for graduate students and researchers in statistics, biostatistics, electrical engineering, econometrics, and applied mathematics, this is both an entry-level text and a valuable reference.

Universally acknowledged as the classic text in its field, this volume covers order statistics and their exceedances; exact distribution of extremes; analytical study of extremes; the 1st asymptotic distribution; uses of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd asymptotes; and the range summary. 1958 edition. Includes 44 tables and 97 graphs.

This lively collection of essays examines in witty detail the history of some of the concepts involved in bringing statistical argument "to the table," and some of the pitfalls that have been encountered. The topics range from seventeenth-century medicine and the circulation of blood, to the cause of the Great Depression and the effect of the California gold discoveries of 1848 upon price levels, to the determinations of the shape of the Earth and the speed of light, to the meter of Virgil's poetry and the prediction of the Second Coming of Christ. The title essay tells how the statistician Karl Pearson came to issue the challenge to put "statistics on the table" to the economists Marshall, Keynes, and Pigou in 1911. The 1911 dispute involved the effect of parental alcoholism upon children, but the challenge is general and timeless: important arguments require evidence, and quantitative evidence requires statistical evaluation. Some essays examine deep and subtle statistical ideas such as the aggregation and regression paradoxes; others tell of the origin of the Average Man and the evaluation of fingerprints as a forerunner of the use of DNA in forensic science. Several of the essays are entirely nontechnical; all examine statistical ideas with an ironic eye for their essence and what their history can tell us about current disputes.

A timely collection of advanced, original material in the area of statistical methodology motivated by geometric problems, dedicated to the influential work of Kanti V. Mardia This volume celebrates Kanti V. Mardia's long and influential career in statistics. A common theme unifying much of Mardia’s work is the importance of geometry in statistics, and to highlight the areas emphasized in his research this book brings together 16 contributions from high-profile researchers in the field. Geometry Driven Statistics covers a wide range of application areas including directional data, shape analysis, spatial data, climate science, fingerprints, image analysis, computer vision and bioinformatics. The book will appeal to statisticians and others with an interest in data motivated by geometric considerations. Summarizing the state of the art, examining some new developments and presenting a vision for the future, Geometry Driven Statistics will enable the reader to broaden knowledge of important research areas in statistics and gain a new appreciation of the work and influence of Kanti V. Mardia.

WILEY-INTERSCIENCE PAPERBACK SERIES The Wiley-Interscience Paperback Series consists of selected books that have been made more accessible to consumers in an effort to increase global appeal and general circulation. With these new unabridged softcover volumes, Wiley hopes to extend the lives of these works by making them available to future generations of statisticians, mathematicians, and scientists. "In recent years many monographs have been published on specialized aspects of multivariate data-analysis–on cluster analysis, multidimensional scaling, correspondence analysis, developments of discriminant analysis, graphical methods, classification, and so on. This book is an attempt to review these newer methods together with the classical theory. . . . This one merits two cheers." –J. C. Gower, Department of Statistics Rothamsted Experimental Station, Harpenden, U.K. Review in Biometrics, June 1987 Multivariate Observations is a comprehensive sourcebook that treats data-oriented techniques as well as classical methods. Emphasis is on principles rather than mathematical detail, and coverage ranges from the practical problems of graphically representing high-dimensional data to the theoretical problems relating to matrices of random variables. Each chapter serves as a self-contained survey of a specific topic. The book includes many numerical examples and over 1,100 references.