A Celebration of Statistics


Book Description

The International Statistical Institute was founded in 1885 and is therefore one of the world's oldest international scientific societies. The field of statistics is still expanding rapidly and possesses a rich variety of applications in many areas of human activity such as science, government, business, industry, and everyday affairs. In consequence, the celebration of the Institute's centenary in 1985 is of considerable interest not only to statisticians but also more widely to the international scientific community. As part of its centennial celebration planning the Institute decided to publish a volume of papers representing the immensely wide range of interests encompassed by statistics in its international context, viewed both from a historical and from a contemporary standpoint. We were fortunate in securing the services of Anthony Atkinson and Stephen Fienberg as Editors of this volume: they have worked hard over a period of several years to put together a most fascinating collection of papers. On behalf of the Institute it is my pleasant duty to thank them and the authors for their contributions. J. DURBIN, President International Statistical Institute Preface The papers in this volume were prepared to help celebrate the centenary of the International Statistical Institute. During the lSI's first 100 years statistics has matured, both as a scientific discipline and as a profession, in ways that the lSI's founders could not possibly have imagined.




A Celebration of Statistics


Book Description

Research papers, statistical methods, international trends - mathematical models for data collecting on infectious diseases, statistical computing, econometric modeling, population surveys, statistical methods in social sciences, psychiatry, crop forecasting, case studies, UK, USA, USSR. Graphs, references, statistical tables. Festschrift International Statistics Institute 1885-1985.




Introducing Statistics


Book Description

From the medicine we take, the treatments we receive, the aptitude and psychometric tests given by employers, the cars we drive, the clothes we wear to even the beer we drink, statistics have given shape to the world we inhabit. For the media, statistics are routinely 'damning', 'horrifying', or, occasionally, 'encouraging'. Yet, for all their ubiquity, most of us really don't know what to make of statistics. Exploring the history, mathematics, philosophy and practical use of statistics, Eileen Magnello - accompanied by Bill Mayblin's intelligent graphic illustration - traces the rise of statistics from the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians and Chinese, to the censuses of Romans and the Greeks, and the modern emergence of the term itself in Europe. She explores the 'vital statistics' of, in particular, William Farr, and the mathematical statistics of Karl Pearson and R.A. Fisher.She even tells how knowledge of statistics can prolong one's life, as it did for evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, given eight months to live after a cancer diagnoses in 1982 - and he lived until 2002. This title offers an enjoyable, surprise-filled tour through a subject that is both fascinating and crucial to understanding our world.







Methods and Applications of Statistics in the Life and Health Sciences


Book Description

Inspired by the Encyclopedia of Statistical Sciences, Second Edition, this volume outlines the statistical tools for successfully working with modern life and health sciences research Data collection holds an essential part in dictating the future of health sciences and public health, as the compilation of statistics allows researchers and medical practitioners to monitor trends in health status, identify health problems, and evaluate the impact of health policies and programs. Methods and Applications of Statistics in the Life and Health Sciences serves as a single, one-of-a-kind resource on the wide range of statistical methods, techniques, and applications that are applied in modern life and health sciences in research. Specially designed to present encyclopedic content in an accessible and self-contained format, this book outlines thorough coverage of the underlying theory and standard applications to research in related disciplines such as biology, epidemiology, clinical trials, and public health. Uniquely combining established literature with cutting-edge research, this book contains classical works and more than twenty-five new articles and completely revised contributions from the acclaimed Encyclopedia of Statistical Sciences, Second Edition. The result is a compilation of more than eighty articles that explores classic methodology and new topics, including: Sequential methods in biomedical research Statistical measures of human quality of life Change-point methods in genetics Sample size determination for clinical trials Mixed-effects regression models for predicting pre-clinical disease Probabilistic and statistical models for conception Statistical methods are explored and applied to population growth, disease detection and treatment, genetic and genomic research, drug development, clinical trials, screening and prevention, and the assessment of rehabilitation, recovery, and quality of life. These topics are explored in contributions written by more than 100 leading academics, researchers, and practitioners who utilize various statistical practices, such as election bias, survival analysis, missing data techniques, and cluster analysis for handling the wide array of modern issues in the life and health sciences. With its combination of traditional methodology and newly developed research, Methods and Applications of Statistics in the Life and Health Sciences has everything students, academics, and researchers in the life and health sciences need to build and apply their knowledge of statistical methods and applications.




Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions


Book Description

Evaluating statistical procedures through decision and game theory, as first proposed by Neyman and Pearson and extended by Wald, is the goal of this problem-oriented text in mathematical statistics. First-year graduate students in statistics and other students with a background in statistical theory and advanced calculus will find a rigorous, thorough presentation of statistical decision theory treated as a special case of game theory. The work of Borel, von Neumann, and Morgenstern in game theory, of prime importance to decision theory, is covered in its relevant aspects: reduction of games to normal forms, the minimax theorem, and the utility theorem. With this introduction, Blackwell and Professor Girshick look at: Values and Optimal Strategies in Games; General Structure of Statistical Games; Utility and Principles of Choice; Classes of Optimal Strategies; Fixed Sample-Size Games with Finite Ω and with Finite A; Sufficient Statistics and the Invariance Principle; Sequential Games; Bayes and Minimax Sequential Procedures; Estimation; and Comparison of Experiments. A few topics not directly applicable to statistics, such as perfect information theory, are also discussed. Prerequisites for full understanding of the procedures in this book include knowledge of elementary analysis, and some familiarity with matrices, determinants, and linear dependence. For purposes of formal development, only discrete distributions are used, though continuous distributions are employed as illustrations. The number and variety of problems presented will be welcomed by all students, computer experts, and others using statistics and game theory. This comprehensive and sophisticated introduction remains one of the strongest and most useful approaches to a field which today touches areas as diverse as gambling and particle physics.




Statistical Decision Theory and Related Topics V


Book Description

The Fifth Purdue International Symposium on Statistical Decision The was held at Purdue University during the period of ory and Related Topics June 14-19,1992. The symposium brought together many prominent leaders and younger researchers in statistical decision theory and related areas. The format of the Fifth Symposium was different from the previous symposia in that in addition to the 54 invited papers, there were 81 papers presented in contributed paper sessions. Of the 54 invited papers presented at the sym posium, 42 are collected in this volume. The papers are grouped into a total of six parts: Part 1 - Retrospective on Wald's Decision Theory and Sequential Analysis; Part 2 - Asymptotics and Nonparametrics; Part 3 - Bayesian Analysis; Part 4 - Decision Theory and Selection Procedures; Part 5 - Probability and Probabilistic Structures; and Part 6 - Sequential, Adaptive, and Filtering Problems. While many of the papers in the volume give the latest theoretical developments in these areas, a large number are either applied or creative review papers.




MODA4 — Advances in Model-Oriented Data Analysis


Book Description

This volume is the proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Model-Oriented Data Analysis. This series of events originated in 1987 at a meeting in Eisenach, that successfully brought together scientists from numerous countries of the 'East ' and 'West'. Now that this distinction is obsolete dialogue has been greatly facilitated, providing opportunities for this dialogue, however, is as vital as ever. The present meeting at Spetses, Greece from 5th to 9th of June 1995 again assembles statisticians from all over the world as this book documents. The hospitality offered by the University of Economics of Athens and the Korgialenios School made it possible to organize this workshop. The editors are also grateful to Intracom (Greece), the Ionian Bank and the Procter & Gamble Company (USA) for their generous support. We would particularly like to mention Dr. Michael Meredith, who being our contact person at Procter & Gamble, enabled us to publish these proceedings. Further thanks go to Dr. Peter Schuster from Physica Verlag Heidelberg for his continuing support of the project. The contributions to this volume were carefully selected from the submissions by the editors after a one stage refereeing process. We would like to thank the members of the MODA committee, A.C. Atkinson, R.D. Cook, V.V. Fedorov, P.Hackl, H. Lauter, B.Torsney, LN. Vuchkov, H.P.Wynn,and A.A. Zhigljavsky, who not only defined the main topics of the workshop, but also served as the referees.




A Celebration of the EDGE Program’s Impact on the Mathematics Community and Beyond


Book Description

The Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) Program began twenty years ago to provide support for women entering doctoral programs in the mathematical sciences. With a steadfast commitment to diversity among participants, faculty, and staff, EDGE initially alternated between Bryn Mawr and Spelman Colleges. In later years, EDGE has been hosted on campuses around the nation and expanded to offer support for women throughout their graduate school and professional careers. The refereed papers in A Celebration of the EDGE Program’s Impact on the Mathematics Community and Beyond range from short memoirs, to pedagogical studies, to current mathematics research. All papers are written by former EDGE participants, mentors, instructors, directors, and others connected to EDGE. Together, these papers offer compelling testimony that EDGE has produced a diverse new generation of leaders in the mathematics community. This volume contains technical and non-technical works, and it is intended for a far-reaching audience, including mathematicians, mathematics teachers, diversity officers, university administrators, government employees writing educational or science policy, and mathematics students at the high school, college, and graduate levels. By highlighting the scope of the work done by those supported by EDGE, the volume offers strong evidence of the American Mathematical Society’s recognition that EDGE is "a program that makes a difference.” This volume offers unique testimony that a 20-year old summer program has expanded its reach beyond the summer experience to produce a diverse new generation of women leaders, nearly half of whom are underrepresented women. While some books with a women-in-math theme focus only on one topic such as research or work-life balance, this book's broad scope includes papers on mathematics research, teaching, outreach, and career paths.




Elements of Statistical Computing


Book Description

Statistics and computing share many close relationships. Computing now permeates every aspect of statistics, from pure description to the development of statistical theory. At the same time, the computational methods used in statistical work span much of computer science. Elements of Statistical Computing covers the broad usage of computing in statistics. It provides a comprehensive account of the most important computational statistics. Included are discussions of numerical analysis, numerical integration, and smoothing. The author give special attention to floating point standards and numerical analysis; iterative methods for both linear and nonlinear equation, such as Gauss-Seidel method and successive over-relaxation; and computational methods for missing data, such as the EM algorithm. Also covered are new areas of interest, such as the Kalman filter, projection-pursuit methods, density estimation, and other computer-intensive techniques.