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This volume presents some of the most influential papers published by Rabi N. Bhattacharya, along with commentaries from international experts, demonstrating his knowledge, insight, and influence in the field of probability and its applications. For more than three decades, Bhattacharya has made significant contributions in areas ranging from theoretical statistics via analytical probability theory, Markov processes, and random dynamics to applied topics in statistics, economics, and geophysics. Selected reprints of Bhattacharya's papers are divided into three sections: Modes of Approximation, Large Times for Markov Processes, and Stochastic Foundations in Applied Sciences. The accompanying articles by the contributing authors not only help to position his work in the context of other achievements, but also provide a unique assessment of the state of their individual fields, both historically and for the next generation of researchers.Rabi N. Bhattacharya: Selected Papers will be a valuable resource for young researchers entering the diverse areas of study to which Bhattacharya has contributed. Established researchers will also appreciate this work as an account of both past and present developments and challenges for the future.

The population and housing census is part of an integrated national statistical system, which may include other censuses (for example, agriculture), surveys, registers and administrative files. It provides, at regular intervals, the benchmark for population count at national and local levels. For small geographical areas or sub-populations, it may represent the only source of information for certain social, demographic and economic characteristics. For many countries the census also provides a solid framework to develop sampling frames. This publication represents one of the pillars for data collection on the number and characteristics of the population of a country.

This book, and its companion volume in the Econometric Society Monographs series (ESM number 32), present a collection of papers by Clive W. J. Granger. His contributions to economics and econometrics, many of them seminal, span more than four decades and touch on all aspects of time series analysis. The papers assembled in this volume explore topics in causality, integration and cointegration, and long memory. Those in the companion volume investigate themes in causality, integration and cointegration, and long memory. The two volumes contain the original articles as well as an introduction written by the editors.

This book, and its companion volume in the Econometric Society Monographs series (ESM number 33), present a collection of papers by Clive W. J. Granger. His contributions to economics and econometrics, many of them seminal, span more than four decades and touch on all aspects of time series analysis. The papers assembled in this volume explore topics in spectral analysis, seasonality, nonlinearity, methodology, and forecasting. Those in the companion volume investigate themes in causality, integration and cointegration, and long memory. The two volumes contain the original articles as well as an introduction written by the editors.

The book presents a collection of peer-reviewed short papers selected from those presented at the International Conference Mathematical and Statistical Methods for Actuarial Sciences and Finance – MAF2024. The year 2024 marks the twentieth anniversary of the first edition of this conference. The idea behind this book is that collaboration and cross-pollination between mathematicians and statisticians working in actuarial sciences and finance could enhance research in these fields. The effectiveness of this concept has been demonstrated by widespread participation across all editions, held at various locations including the University of Salerno, Italy (2004, 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2022); Ca'Foscari University of Venice, Italy (2008, 2012, and 2020); University Paris-Dauphine in Paris, France (2016); University Carlos III of Madrid, Madrid (2018); and University of Le Havre Normandie, Le Havre, France (2024). This effectiveness is also evident in the attention consistently shown by both the scientific community and professionals toward the volumes of peer-reviewed papers accompanying all past editions of MAF. The book is a valuable resource for academics, researchers, Ph.D. students, and professionals. Furthermore, it is also of interest to other readers with a quantitative background.

Prof. Pedro A. Morettin is a Distinguished Professor of Statistics at the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of São Paulo (IME-USP), where he has built an academic career spanning almost six decades. His work has had a significant impact on Time Series Analysis and Wavelet Statistical Methods, as exemplified by the papers appearing in this Festschrift, which are authored by renowned researchers in both fields. Besides his long-term commitment to research, Prof. Morettin is very active in mentoring and serving the profession. Moreover, he has written several textbooks, which are still a leading source of knowledge and learning for undergraduate and graduate students, practitioners, and researchers. Divided into two parts, the Festschrift presents a collection of papers that illustrate Prof. Morettin's broad contributions to Time Series and Econometrics, and to Wavelets. The reader will be able to learn state-of-the-art statistical methodologies, from periodic ARMA models, fractional Brownian motion, and generalized Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes to spatial models, passing through complex structures designed for high-dimensional data analysis, such as graph and dynamic models. The topics and data features discussed here include high-frequency sampling, fNRIS, forecasting, portfolio apportionment, volatility assessment, dairy production, and inflation, which are relevant to econometrics, medicine, and the food industry. The volume ends with a discussion of several very powerful tools based on wavelets, spectral analysis, dimensionality reduction, self-similarity, scaling, copulas, and other notions.

Revised and updated for the second edition, this textbook allows students to work through classic texts in economics and finance, using the original data and replicating their results. In this book, the author rejects the theorem-proof approach as much as possible, and emphasizes the practical application of econometrics. They show with examples how to calculate and interpret the numerical results.This book begins with students estimating simple univariate models, in a step by step fashion, using the popular Stata software system. Students then test for stationarity, while replicating the actual results from hugely influential papers such as those by Granger & Newbold, and Nelson & Plosser. Readers will learn about structural breaks by replicating papers by Perron, and Zivot & Andrews. They then turn to models of conditional volatility, replicating papers by Bollerslev. Students estimate multi-equation models such as vector autoregressions and vector error-correction mechanisms, replicating the results in influential papers by Sims and Granger. Finally, students estimate static and dynamic panel data models, replicating papers by Thompson, and Arellano & Bond.The book contains many worked-out examples, and many data-driven exercises. While intended primarily for graduate students and advanced undergraduates, practitioners will also find the book useful.“How to best start learning time series econometrics? Learning by doing. This is the ethos of this book. What makes this book useful is that it provides numerous worked out examples along with basic concepts. It is a fresh, no-nonsense, practical approach that students will love when they start learning time series econometrics. I recommend this book strongly as a study guide for students who look for hands-on learning experience.'--Professor Sokbae'Simon'Lee, Columbia University, Co-Editor of Econometric Theory and Associate Editor of Econometrics Journal.

This book provides an analytical and computational approach to solving and simulating the Mahalanobis model and the papers surrounding it. The book comes up, perhaps for the first time, with a holistic examination of an important growth model that emerged out of India in the 1950s. It contains detailed derivations of the Mahalanobis model and the several critiques and extensions surrounding it with an organized synthesis of the main results. Computationally, the book simulates the model and its many variants, thus making it accessible to a wider audience. Advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students in the fields of Economics, Mathematics, and Statistics will gain immensely from understanding both the mathematical aspects as well as the computational aspects of the Mahalanobis model. In the absence of a single'go-to'source on all aspects of the model -- analytical and computational -- this book is a definitive volume on the Mahalanobis model that has allthe derivations of all the papers surrounding the model, its dissents and critiques, and extensions as in the wage goods model suggested by Vakil and Brahmananda.

This volume gathers peer-reviewed contributions that address a wide range of recent developments in the methodology and applications of data analysis and classification tools in micro and macroeconomic problems. The papers were originally presented at the 29th Conference of the Section on Classification and Data Analysis of the Polish Statistical Association, SKAD 2020, held in Sopot, Poland, September 7–9, 2020. Providing a balance between methodological contributions and empirical papers, the book is divided into five parts focusing on methodology, finance, economics, social issues and applications dealing with COVID-19 data. It is aimed at a wide audience, including researchers at universities and research institutions, graduate and doctoral students, practitioners, data scientists and employees in public statistical institutions.

This volume is a reorganized edition of Kei Takeuchi's works on various problems in mathematical statistics based on papers and monographs written since the 1960s on several topics in mathematical statistics and published in various journals in English and in Japanese. They are organized into seven parts, each of which is concerned with specific topics and edited to make a consistent thesis. Sometimes expository chapters have been added. The topics included are as follows: theory of statistical prediction from a non-Bayesian viewpoint and analogous to the classical theory of statistical inference; theory of robust estimation, concepts, and procedures, and its implications for practical applications; theory of location and scale covariant/invariant estimations with derivation of explicit forms in various cases; theory of selection and testing of parametric models and a comprehensive approach including the derivation of the Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC); theory of randomized designs, comparisons of random and conditional approaches, and of randomized and non-randomized designs, with random sampling from finite populations considered as a special case of randomized designs and with some separate independent papers included. Theory of asymptotically optimal and higher-order optimal estimators are not included, since most of them already have been published in the Joint Collected Papers of M. Akahira and K. Takeuchi. There are some topics that are not necessarily new, do not seem to have attracted many theoretical statisticians, and do not appear to have been systematically dealt with in textbooks or expository monographs. One purpose of this volume is to give a comprehensive view of such problems as well.

This volume is a tribute to Professor Dietrich von Rosen on the occasion of his 65th birthday. It contains a collection of twenty original papers. The contents of the papers evolve around multivariate analysis and random matrices with topics such as high-dimensional analysis, goodness-of-fit measures, variable selection and information criteria, inference of covariance structures, the Wishart distribution and growth curve models.

This book provides insights into contemporary issues and challenges in soft computing applications and techniques in healthcare. It will be a useful guide to identify, categorise and assess the role of different soft computing techniques for disease, diagnosis and prediction due to technological advancements.The book explores applications in soft computing and covers empirical properties of artificial neural network (ANN), evolutionary computing, fuzzy logic and statistical techniques. It presents basic and advanced concepts to help beginners and industry professionals get up to speed on the latest developments in soft computing and healthcare systems. It incorporates the latest methodologies and challenges facing soft computing, examines descriptive, predictive and social network techniques and discusses analytics tools and their role in providing effective solutions for science and technology. The primary users for the book include researchers, academicians, postgraduate students, specialists and practitioners.Dr. Ashish Mishra is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Gyan Ganga Institute of Technology and Sciences, Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India. He has contributed in organising the INSPIRE Science Internship Camp. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and is a life member of the Computer Society of India. His research interests include the Internet of Things, data mining, cloud computing, image processing and knowledge-based systems. He holds nine patents in Intellectual Property, India. He has authored four books in the areas of data mining, image processing and LaTex.Dr. G. Suseendran is an assistant professor, Department of Information Technology, School of Computing Sciences, Vels Institute of Science, Technology & Advanced Studies (VISTAS), Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. His research interests include ad-hoc networks, the Internet of Things, data mining, cloud computing, image processing, knowledge-based systems, and Web information exploration. He has published more than 75 research papers in various international journals such as Science Citation Index, Springer Book Chapter, Scopus, IEEE Access and UGC-referred journals. Prof. Trung-Nghia Phung is an associate professor and Head of Academic Affairs, Thai Nguyen University of Information and Communication Technology (ICTU). He has published more than 60 research papers. His main research interest lies in the field of speech, audio, and biomedical signal processing. He serves as a technical committee program member, track chair, session chair, and reviewer of many international conferences and journals. He was a co-Chair of the International Conference on Advances in Information and Communication Technology 2016 (ICTA 2016) and a Session Chair of the 4th International Conference on Information System Design and Intelligent Applications (INDIA 2017).

In dieser Dissertation werden drei eigenständige Paper vorgestellt, die sich mit der Entscheidungsunterstützung bei der Kaskadennutzung von nachwachsenden Rohstoffen in unterschiedlichen wirtschaftlichen Bereichen beschäftigen. Die ersten zwei Paper untersuchen dabei finanzielle und ökologische Auswirkungen der Kaskadennutzung. Gegenstand der Untersuchung im ersten Paper ist die Kaskadennutzung in logistischen Netzwerken von Holzflüssen. Dagegen werden im zweiten Paper Wirtschaftsdüngertransporte aus viehreichen Regionen in vieharme Regionen untersucht. Hierbei besteht die Kaskadennutzung in der Nutzung des Wirtschaftsdüngers in einer Biogasanlage zur Energiegewinnung vor der letztendlichen Ausbringung als Dünger. Das dritte Paper thematisiert unsichere Minimax-Probleme, die auch im Rahmen der Kaskadennutzung vorkommen können. Es untersucht mathematisch, welche strukturellen Eigenschaften das unsichere Minimax-Problem besitzt und wie dies der Entscheidungsunterstützung dient.

In this book, the author rejects the theorem-proof approach as much as possible, and emphasize the practical application of econometrics. They show with examples how to calculate and interpret the numerical results. This book begins with students estimating simple univariate models, in a step by step fashion, using the popular Stata software system. Students then test for stationarity, while replicating the actual results from hugely influential papers such as those by Granger and Newbold, and Nelson and Plosser. Readers will learn about structural breaks by replicating papers by Perron, and Zivot and Andrews. They then turn to models of conditional volatility, replicating papers by Bollerslev. Finally, students estimate multi-equation models such as vector autoregressions and vector error-correction mechanisms, replicating the results in influential papers by Sims and Granger. The book contains many worked-out examples, and many data-driven exercises. While intended primarily for graduate students and advanced undergraduates, practitioners will also find the book useful.

Despite numerous books on research methodology, many have failed to present a complete, hands-on, practical book to lead college classes or individuals through the research process. We are seeing more and more scientific papers from all research fields that fail to meet the basic criteria in terms of research methods, as well as the structure, writing style and presentation of results. This book aims to address this gap in the market by providing an authoritative, easy to follow guide to research methods and how to apply them. Qualitative Methods in Economics is focused not only on the research methods/techniques but also the methodology. The main objective of this book is to discuss qualitative methods and their use in economics and social science research. Chapters identify several of the research approaches commonly used in social studies, from the importance of the role of science through to the techniques of data collection. Using an example research paper to examine the methods used to present the research, the second half of this book breaks down how to present and format your results successfully. This book will be of use to students and researchers who want to improve their research methods and read up on the new and cutting edge advances in research methods, as well as those who like to study ways to improve the research process.

This book is the outcome of the CIMPA School on Statistical Methods and Applications in Insurance and Finance, held in Marrakech and Kelaat M'gouna (Morocco) in April 2013. It presents two lectures and seven refereed papers from the school, offering the reader important insights into key topics. The first of the lectures, by Frederic Viens, addresses risk management via hedging in discrete and continuous time, while the second, by Boualem Djehiche, reviews statistical estimation methods applied to life and disability insurance. The refereed papers offer diverse perspectives and extensive discussions on subjects including optimal control, financial modeling using stochastic differential equations, pricing and hedging of financial derivatives, and sensitivity analysis. Each chapter of the volume includes a comprehensive bibliography to promote further research.

This book fills an important gap in studies on D. D. Kosambi. For the first time, the mathematical work of Kosambi is described, collected and presented in a manner that is accessible to non-mathematicians as well. A number of his papers that are difficult to obtain in these areas are made available here. In addition, there are essays by Kosambi that have not been published earlier as well as some of his lesser known works. Each of the twenty four papers is prefaced by a commentary on the significance of the work, and where possible, extracts from technical reviews by other mathematicians.

This book provides a detailed introduction to the theoretical and methodological foundations of production efficiency analysis using benchmarking. Two of the more popular methods of efficiency evaluation are Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), both of which are based on the concept of a production possibility set and its frontier. Depending on the assumed objectives of the decision-making unit, a Production, Cost, or Profit Frontier is constructed from observed data on input and output quantities and prices. While SFA uses different maximum likelihood estimation techniques to estimate a parametric frontier, DEA relies on mathematical programming to create a nonparametric frontier. Yet another alternative is the Convex Nonparametric Frontier, which is based on the assumed convexity of the production possibility set and creates a piecewise linear frontier consisting of a number of tangent hyper planes.Three of the papers in this volume provide a detailed and relatively easy to follow exposition of the underlying theory from neoclassical production economics and offer step-by-step instructions on the appropriate model to apply in different contexts and how to implement them. Of particular appeal are the instructions on (i) how to write the codes for different SFA models on STATA, (ii) how to write a VBA Macro for repetitive solution of the DEA problem for each production unit on Excel Solver, and (iii) how to write the codes for the Nonparametric Convex Frontier estimation. The three other papers in the volume are primarily theoretical and will be of interest to PhD students and researchers hoping to make methodological and conceptual contributions to the field of nonparametric efficiency analysis.

The book, belonging to the series “Studies in Theoretical and Applied Statistics– Selected Papers from the Statistical Societies”, presents a peer-reviewed selection of contributions on relevant topics organized by the editors on the occasion of the SIS 2013 Statistical Conference'Advances in Latent Variables. Methods, Models and Applications', held at the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Brescia from June 19 to 21, 2013.The focus of the book is on advances in statistical methods for analyses with latent variables. In fact, in recent years, there has been increasing interest in this broad research area from both a theoretical and an applied point of view, as the statistical latent variable approach allows the effective modeling of complex real-life phenomena in a wide range of research fields.A major goal of the volume is to bring together articles written by statisticians from different research fields, which present different approaches and experiences related to the analysis of unobservable variables and the study of the relationships between them.

The interaction between mathematicians and statisticians has been shown to be an effective approach for dealing with actuarial, insurance and financial problems, both from an academic perspective and from an operative one. The collection of original papers presented in this volume pursues precisely this purpose. It covers a wide variety of subjects in actuarial, insurance and finance fields, all treated in the light of the successful cooperation between the above two quantitative approaches. The papers published in this volume present theoretical and methodological contributions and their applications to real contexts. With respect to the theoretical and methodological contributions, some of the considered areas of investigation are: actuarial models; alternative testing approaches; behavioral finance; clustering techniques; coherent and non-coherent risk measures; credit scoring approaches; data envelopment analysis; dynamic stochastic programming; financial contagion models; financial ratios; intelligent financial trading systems; mixture normality approaches; Monte Carlo-based methods; multicriteria methods; nonlinear parameter estimation techniques; nonlinear threshold models; particle swarm optimization; performance measures; portfolio optimization; pricing methods for structured and non-structured derivatives; risk management; skewed distribution analysis; solvency analysis; stochastic actuarial valuation methods; variable selection models; time series analysis tools. As regards the applications, they are related to real problems associated, among the others, to: banks; collateralized fund obligations; credit portfolios; defined benefit pension plans; double-indexed pension annuities; efficient-market hypothesis; exchange markets; financial time series; firms; hedge funds; non-life insurance companies; returns distributions; socially responsible mutual funds; unit-linked contracts. This book is aimed at academics, Ph.D.students, practitioners, professionals and researchers. But it will also be of interest to readers with some quantitative background knowledge.

This book is a multi-purpose document. It can be used as a text by teachers, as a reference manual by researchers, and as a practical guide by statisticians. It covers 1165 references from different research journals through almost 1900 citations across 1194 pages, a large number of complete proofs of theorems, important results such as corollaries, and 324 unsolved exercises from several research papers. It includes 159 solved, data-based, real life numerical examples in disciplines such as Agriculture, Demography, Social Science, Applied Economics, Engineering, Medicine, and Survey Sampling. These solved examples are very useful for an understanding of the applications of advanced sampling theory in our daily life and in diverse fields of science. An additional 173 unsolved practical problems are given at the end of the chapters. University and college professors may find these useful when assigning exercises to students. Each exercise gives exposure to several complete research papers for researchers/students.

The volume on New Directions in Spatial Econometrics appeared in 1995 as one of the first in the then new Springer series on Advances in Spatial Sciences. It very quickly became evident that the book satisfied a pent up demand for a collection of advanced papers dealing with the methodology and application of spatial economet­ rics. This emerging subfield of applied econometrics focuses on the incorporation of location and spatial interaction in the specification, estimation and diagnostic testing of regression models. The current effort is a follow up to the New Directions volume. Even though the number of empirical and theoretical journal articles dealing with various as­ pects of spatial econometrics has grown tremendously in the recent past, the need remained to bring together an advanced collection on methodology, tools and appli­ cations. This volume contains several papers that were presented at special sessions on spatial econometrics organized as part of a number of conferences of the Re­ gional Science Association International. In addition, a few papers were invited for submission. All papers were refereed. The focus in the volume reflects the advances made in the field in recent years.

These book grew out of a course entitled'Physikalische Modelle in der Fi­ nanzwirtschaft'which I have taught at the University of Freiburg during the winter term 1998/1999, building on a similar course a year before at the University of Bayreuth. It was an experiment. My interest in the statistical mechanics of capital markets goes back to a public lecture on self-organized criticality, given at the University of Bayreuth in early 1994. Bak, Tang, and Wiesenfeld, in the first longer paper on their theory of self-organized criticality [Phys. Rev. A 38, 364 (1988)] mention Mandelbrot's 1963 paper [J. Business 36, 394 (1963)] on power-law scaling in commodity markets, and speculate on economic systems being described by their theory. Starting from about 1995, papers appeared with increasing frequency on the Los Alamos preprint server, and in the physics literature, showing that physicists found the idea of applying methods of statistical physics to problems of economy exciting and that they produced interesting results. I also was tempted to start work in this new field. However, there was one major problem: my traditional field of research is the theory of strongly correlated quasi-one-dimensional electrons, conducting polymers, quantum wires and organic superconductors, and I had no prior education in the advanced methods of either stochastics and quantitative finance.

This volume presents 45 articles dealing with theoretical aspects, methodo­ logical advances and practical applications in domains relating to classifica­ tion and clustering, statistical and computational data analysis, conceptual or terminological approaches for information systems, and knowledge struc­ tures for databases. These articles were selected from about 140 papers presented at the 19th Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft fur Klassifika­ tion, the German Classification Society. The conference was hosted by W. Polasek at the Institute of Statistics and Econometry of the University of 1 Basel (Switzerland) March 8-10, 1995. The papers are grouped as follows, where the number in parentheses is the number of papers in the chapter. 1. Classification and clustering (8) 2. Uncertainty and fuzziness (5) 3. Methods of data analysis and applications (7) 4. Statistical models and methods (4) 5. Bayesian learning (5) 6. Conceptual classification, knowledge ordering and information systems (12) 7. Linguistics and dialectometry (4). These chapters are interrelated in many respects. The reader may recogni­ ze, for example, the analogies and distinctions existing among classification principles developed in such different domains as statistics and information sciences, the benefit to be gained by the comparison of conceptual and ma­ thematical approaches for structuring data and knowledge, and, finally, the wealth of practical applications described in many of the papers. For convenience of the reader, the content of this volume is briefly reviewed.

During 1985-86, the acquisition editor for the humanities and social sciences division of Kluwer Academic Publishers in the Netherlands visited the University of Horida (where I was also visiting while on sabbatical leave from Wilfrid Laurier University as the McKethan-Matherly Senior Research Fellow) to discuss publishing plans of the faculty. He expressed a keen interest in publishing the proceedings of the conference of the Canadian Econometric Study Group (CESG) that was to be held the following year at WLU. This volume is the end product of his interest, endurance, and persistence. But for his persistence I would have given up on th~ project Most of the papers (though not all) included in this volume are based on presentations at CESG conferences. In some cases scholars were invited to contribute to this volume where their research complimented those presented at these conferences even though they were not conference participants. Since papers selected for presentation at the CESG conferences are generally the finished product of scholarly research and often under submission to refereed journals, it was not possible to publish the conference proceedings in their entirety. Accordingly it was decided, in consultation with the publisher, to invite a select list of authors to submit significant extensions of the papers they presented at the CESG conferences for inclusion in this volume. The editor wishes to express gratitude to all those authors who submitted their papers for evaluation by anonymous referees and for making revisions to conform to our editorial process.

Designing and Conducting Business Surveys provides a coherent overview of the business survey process, from start to finish. It uniquely integrates an understanding of how businesses operate, a total survey error approach to data quality that focuses specifically on business surveys, and sound project management principles. The book brings together what is currently known about planning, designing, and conducting business surveys, with producing and disseminating statistics or other research results from the collected data. This knowledge draws upon a variety of disciplines such as survey methodology, organizational sciences, sociology, psychology, and statistical methods. The contents of the book formulate a comprehensive guide to scholarly material previously dispersed among books, journal articles, and conference papers. This book provides guidelines that will help the reader make educated trade-off decisions that minimize survey errors, costs, and response burden, while being attentive to survey data quality. Major topics include: • Determining the survey content, considering user needs, the business context, and total survey quality • Planning the survey as a project • Sampling frames, procedures, and methods • Questionnaire design and testing for self-administered paper, web, and mixed-mode surveys • Survey communication design to obtain responses and facilitate the business response process • Conducting and managing the survey using paradata and project management tools • Data processing, including capture, editing, and imputation, and dissemination of statistical outputs Designing and Conducting Business Surveys is an indispensable resource for anyone involved in designing and/or conducting business or organizational surveys at statistical institutes, central banks, survey organizations, etc.; producing statistics or other research results from business surveys at universities, research organizations, etc.; or using data produced from business surveys. The book also lays a foundation for new areas of research in business surveys.

This volume presents 27 selected papers in topics that range from statistical applications in business and finance to applications in clinical trials and biomarker analysis. All papers feature original, peer-reviewed content. The editors intentionally selected papers that cover many topics so that the volume will serve the whole statistical community and a variety of research interests. The papers represent select contributions to the 21st ICSA Applied Statistics Symposium. The International Chinese Statistical Association (ICSA) Symposium took place between the 23rd and 26th of June, 2012 in Boston, Massachusetts. It was co-sponsored by the International Society for Biopharmaceutical Statistics (ISBS) and American Statistical Association (ASA). This is the inaugural proceedings volume to share research from the ICSA Applied Statistics Symposium.

Like the first three volumes, published in 1981, 1984 and 1987 and met with a lively response, the present volume is collecting contributions stressed on methodology or successful industrial applications. The papers are classified under three main headings; sampling inspection, process quality control and experimental design. In the first group there are nine papers on acceptance sampling. The second large group of papers deal with control charts and process control and the third group of papers includes contributions on experimental design.

Mathematica is a computer program (software) for doing symbolic, numeric and graphical analysis of mathematical problems. In the hands of economists, financial analysts and other professionals in econometrics and the quantitative sector of economic and financial modeling, it can be an invaluable tool for modeling and simulation on a large number of issues and problems, besides easily grinding out numbers, doing statistical estimations and rendering graphical plots and visuals. Mathematica enables these individuals to do all of this in a unified environment. This book's main use is that of an applications handbook. Modeling in Economics and Finance with Mathematica is a compilation of contributed papers prepared by experienced,'hands on'users of the Mathematica program. They come from a broad spectrum of Mathematica devotees in the econometric and financial/investment community on both the professional and academic fronts. Each paper provides a set of tools and examples of Mathematica in action. These tools will also be made accessible to users via a DOS-based floppy disk which will contain Mathematica Notebooks and Packages, and be packaged with the book.

The 13th conference of the Gesellschaft fUr Klassifikation e. V. took place at the Universitat Augsburg from April 10 to 12, 1989, with the'local organization by the Lehrstuhl fUr Mathematische Me­ thoden der Wirtschaftswissenschaften. The wide ranged subject of the conference Conceptual and Numerical Analysis of Data was obliged to indicate the variety of the concepts of data and information as well as the manifold methods of analysing and structuring. Based on the received announcements of papers four sections have been arranged: 1. Data Analysis and Classification: Basic Concepts and Methods 2. Applications in Library Sciences, Documentation and Information Sciences 3. Applications in Economics and Social Sciences 4. Applications in Natural Sciences and Computer Sciences This classification doesn't separate strictly, but it shows that theo­ retic and applying researchers of most different disciplines were disposed to present a paper. In 60 survey and special lectures the speakers reported on developments in theory and applications en­ couraging the interdisciplinary dialogue of all participants. This volume contains 42 selected papers grouped according to the four sections. Now we give a short insight into the presented papers. x Several problems of concept analysis, cluster analysis, data analysis and multivariate statistics are considered in 18 pa­ pers of section 1. The geometric representation of a concept lattice is a collection of figures in the plane corresponding to the given concepts in such a way that the subconcept-superconcept-relation corresponds to the containment relation between the figures. R.

The theme of the meeting was “Statistical Methods for the Analysis of Large Data-Sets”. In recent years there has been increasing interest in this subject; in fact a huge quantity of information is often available but standard statistical techniques are usually not well suited to managing this kind of data. The conference serves as an important meeting point for European researchers working on this topic and a number of European statistical societies participated in the organization of the event. The book includes 45 papers from a selection of the 156 papers accepted for presentation and discussed at the conference on “Advanced Statistical Methods for the Analysis of Large Data-sets.”

The Prague Symposia on Asymptotic Statistics represent a twenty years'tradi­ tion of contacts between Czech mathematical statisticians and the conference partic­ ipants. Both, as the organizers hope, return from the Symposia to their work with fresh ideas and new information. The Fifth Prague Symposium was held from September 4 to September 9,1993 at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University. It was sponsored by the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability, the Czech Statistical the Czech Society of Actuaries, Ceska Pojistovna-Insurance and Reinsur­ Society, ance Corporation, and the IFIP WG 7.7. Asymptotic Statistics, a prolific source of methodological concepts, dominated the program of the Symposium. Special sessions were devoted to Mathematics of Insurance and Finance and to Stochastic Programming. The papers presented at the Symposium are published in two parts. Part 1 is.. Part 2 is Number 3, Volume 30 (1994) of the journal Kybernetika, this volume comprising the papers of the authors who were not able to meet the early editorial deadline. The editors of the Proceedings would like to express their sincere thanks to the authors for valuable contributions, to the reviewers for prompt and careful reading the papers, to J. Antoch for his advice with technical part of the Proceedings. Finally they also express their appreciation of the kind cooperation with the Publishing House Physica-Verlag and the journal Kybernetika in bringing out the volumes. Part of the Proceedings was typeset by AN(S-TEX, the macrosystem of the Ame­ rican Mathematical Society.

This Volume contains the Keynote, Invited and Full Contributed papers presented at COMPSTAT 2000. A companion volume (Jansen & Bethlehem, 2000) contains papers describing the Short Communications and Posters. COMPST AT is a one­ week conference held every two years under the auspices of the International Association of Statistical Computing, a section of the International Statistical Institute. COMPST AT 2000 is jointly organised by the Department of Methodology and Statistics of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Utrecht University, and Statistics Netherlands. It is taking place from 21-25 August 2000 at Utrecht University. Previous COMPSTATs (from 1974-1998) were in Vienna, Berlin, Leiden, Edinburgh, Toulouse, Prague, Rome, Copenhagen, Dubrovnik, Neuchatel, Vienna, Barcelona and Bristol. The conference is the main European forum for developments at the interface between statistics and computing. This was encapsulated as follows on the COMPST A T 2000 homepage http://neon. vb.cbs.nlIrsml compstat. Statistical computing provides the link between statistical theory and applied statistics. As at previous COMPSTATs, the scientific programme will range over all aspects of this link, from the development and implementation of new statistical ideas through to user experiences and software evaluation. The programme should appeal to anyone working in statistics and using computers, whether in universities, industrial companies, research institutes or as software developers. At COMPST AT 2000 there is a special interest in the interplay with official statistics. This is evident from papers in the area of computerised data collection, survey methodology, treatment of missing data, and the like.

In science, industry, public administration and documentation centers large amounts of data and information are collected which must be analyzed, ordered, visualized, classified and stored efficiently in order to be useful for practical applications. This volume contains 50 selected theoretical and applied papers presenting a wealth of new and innovative ideas, methods, models and systems which can be used for this purpose. It combines papers and strategies from two main streams of research in an interdisciplinary, dynamic and exciting way: On the one hand, mathematical and statistical methods are described which allow a quantitative analysis of data, provide strategies for classifying objects or making exploratory searches for interesting structures, and give ways to make comprehensive graphical displays of large arrays of data. On the other hand, papers related to information sciences, informatics and data bank systems provide powerful tools for representing, modelling, storing and retrieving facts, data and knowledge characterized by qualitative descriptors, semantic relations, or linguistic concepts. The integration of both fields and a special part on applied problems from biology, medicine, archeology, industry and administration assure that this volume will be informative and useful for theory and practice.

The present volume contains a selection of papers presented at the Eighth Conference of the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS) which was held in Cracow, Poland, July 16-19, 2002. All originally submitted papers were subject to a reviewing process by two independent referees, a procedure which resulted in the selection of the 53 articles presented in this volume. These articles relate to theoretical investigations as well as to practical applications and cover a wide range of topics in the broad domain of classifi­ cation, data analysis and related methods. If we try to classify the wealth of problems, methods and approaches into some representative (partially over­ lapping) groups, we find in particular the following areas: • Clustering • Cluster validation • Discrimination • Multivariate data analysis • Statistical methods • Symbolic data analysis • Consensus trees and phylogeny • Regression trees • Neural networks and genetic algorithms • Applications in economics, medicine, biology, and psychology. Given the international orientation of IFCS conferences and the leading role of IFCS in the scientific world of classification, clustering and data anal­ ysis, this volume collects a representative selection of current research and modern applications in this field and serves as an up-to-date information source for statisticians, data analysts, data mining specialists and computer scientists.

This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the Seven~h Confer­ ence of the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS-2000), which was held in Namur, Belgium, July 11-14,2000. From the originally sub­ mitted papers, a careful review process involving two reviewers per paper, led to the selection of 65 papers that were considered suitable for publication in this book. The present book contains original research contributions, innovative ap­ plications and overview papers in various fields within data analysis, classifi­ cation, and related methods. Given the fast publication process, the research results are still up-to-date and coincide with their actual presentation at the IFCS-2000 conference. The topics captured are: • Cluster analysis • Comparison of clusterings • Fuzzy clustering • Discriminant analysis • Mixture models • Analysis of relationships data • Symbolic data analysis • Regression trees • Data mining and neural networks • Pattern recognition • Multivariate data analysis • Robust data analysis • Data science and sampling The IFCS (International Federation of Classification Societies) The IFCS promotes the dissemination of technical and scientific information data analysis, classification, related methods, and their applica­ concerning tions.

This volume contains revised versions of selected papers presented dur­ ing the 23rd Annual Conference of the German Classification Society GfKl (Gesellschaft fiir Klassifikation). The conference took place at the Univer­ sity of Bielefeld (Germany) in March 1999 under the title'Classification and Information Processing at the Turn of the Millennium'. Researchers and practitioners - interested in data analysis, classification, and information processing in the broad sense, including computer science, multimedia, WWW, knowledge discovery, and data mining as well as spe­ cial application areas such as (in alphabetical order) biology, finance, genome analysis, marketing, medicine, public health, and text analysis - had the op­ portunity to discuss recent developments and to establish cross-disciplinary cooperation in their fields of interest. Additionally, software and book pre­ sentations as well as several tutorial courses were organized. The scientific program of the conference included 18 plenary or semi plenary lectures and more than 100 presentations in special sections. The peer-reviewed papers are presented in 5 chapters as follows: • Data Analysis and Classification • Computer Science, Computational Statistics, and Data Mining • Management Science, Marketing, and Finance • Biology, Genome Analysis, and Medicine • Text Analysis and Information Retrieval As an unambiguous assignment of results to single chapters is sometimes difficult papers are grouped in a way that the editors found appropriate.

This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the biannual meeting of the Classification and Data Analysis Group of Societa Italiana di Statistica, which was held in Rome, July 5-6, 1999. From the originally submitted papers, a careful review process led to the selection of 45 papers presented in four parts as follows: CLASSIFICATION AND MULTIDIMENSIONAL SCALING Cluster analysis Discriminant analysis Proximity structures analysis and Multidimensional Scaling Genetic algorithms and neural networks MUL TIV ARIA TE DATA ANALYSIS Factorial methods Textual data analysis Regression Models for Data Analysis Nonparametric methods SPATIAL AND TIME SERIES DATA ANALYSIS Time series analysis Spatial data analysis CASE STUDIES INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF CLASSIFICATION SOCIETIES The International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS) is an agency for the dissemination of technical and scientific information concerning classification and data analysis in the broad sense and in as wide a range of applications as possible; founded in 1985 in Cambridge (UK) from the following Scientific Societies and Groups: British Classification Society -BCS; Classification Society of North America - CSNA; Gesellschaft fUr Klassifikation - GfKI; Japanese Classification Society -JCS; Classification Group of Italian Statistical Society - CGSIS; Societe Francophone de Classification -SFC. Now the IFCS includes also the following Societies: Dutch-Belgian Classification Society - VOC; Polish Classification Society -SKAD; Associayao Portuguesa de Classificayao e Analise de Dados -CLAD; Korean Classification Society -KCS; Group-at-Large.

International Federation of Classification Societies The International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS) is an agency for the dissemination of technical and scientific information concerning classification and data analysis in the broad sense and in as wide a· range of applications as possible; founded in 1985 in Cambridge (UK) from the following Scientific Societies and Groups: British Classification Society -BCS; Classification Society of North America -CSNA; Gesellschaft fUr Klassifikation -GfKl; Japanese Classification Society -JCS; Classification Group of Italian Statistical Society - COSIS; Societe Francophone de Classification -SFC. Now the IFCS includes the following Societies: Dutch-Belgian Classification Society - VOC; Polish Classification Section - SKAD; Portuguese Classification Association - CLAD; Group-at-Large; Korean Classification Society -KCS. Biannual Meeting of the Classification and Data Analysis Group of SIS The biannual meeting of the Classification and Data Analysis Group of Societa Italiana di Statistica (SIS) was held in Pescara, July 3 -4, 1997. The 69 papers presented were divided in 17 sessions. Each session was organized by a chairperson with two invited speakers and two contributed papers from a call for papers. All the works were referred. Furthermore, during the meeting a discussant was provided for each session. A short version of the papers (4 pages) was.published before the conference.

A volume of this nature containing a collection of papers has been brought out to honour a gentleman - a friend and a colleague - whose work has, to a large extent, advanced and popularized the use of stochastic point processes. Professor Srinivasan celebrated his sixt~ first 1:!irth d~ on December 16,1990 and will be retiring as Professor of Applied Mathematics from the Indian Institute of Technolo~, Madras on June 30,1991. In view of his outstanding contributions to the theor~ and applications of stochastic processes over a time span of thirt~ ~ears, it seemed appropriate not to let his birth d~ and retirement pass unnoticed. A s~posium in his honour and the publication of the proceedings appeared to us to be the most natural and sui table ~ to mark the occasion. The Indian Societ~ for ProbabU it~ and Statistics volunteered to organize the S~posium as part of their XII Annual conference in Bomba~. We requested a number of long-time friends, colleagues and former students of Professor Srinivasan to contribute a paper preferabl~ in the area of stochastic processes and their applications. The positive response and the enthusiastic cooperation of these distinguished scientists have resulted in the present collection. The contributions to this volume are divided into four parts: Stochastic Theor~ (2 articles), P~sics (6 articles), Biolo~ (4 articles) and Operations Research (12 articles). In addition the ke~note address delivered b~ Professor Srinivasan in the S~posium is also included.

The papers assembled in this book were presented at the biannual symposium of Inter­ national Association for Statistical Computing in Neuchcitel, Switzerland, in August of 1992. This congress marked the tenth such meeting from its inception in 1974 at Vienna and maintained the tradition of providing a forum for the open discussion of progress made in computer oriented statistics and the dissemination of new ideas throughout the statistical community. It was gratifying to see how well the groups of theoretical statisti­ cians, software developers and applied research workers were represented, whose mixing is an event made uniquely possible by this symposium. While maintaining traditions certain new features have been introduced at this con­ ference: there were a larger number of invited speakers; there was more commercial sponsorship and exhibition space; and a larger body of proceedings have been published. The structure of the proceedings follows a standard format: the papers have been grouped together according to a rough subject matter classification, and within topic follow an approximate aphabetical order. The papers are published in two volumes ac­ cording to the emphasis of the topics: volume I gives a slight leaning towards statistics and modelling, while volume II is focussed more on computation; but this is certainly only a crude distinction and the volumes have to be thought of as the result of a single en terprise.

In multivariate statistical analysis, elliptical distributions have recently provided an alternative to the normal model. Most of the work, however, is spread out in journals throughout the world and is not easily accessible to the investigators. Fang, Kotz, and Ng presented a systematic study of multivariate elliptical distributions, however, they did not discuss the matrix variate case. Recently Fang and Zhang have summarized the results of generalized multivariate analysis which include vector as well as the matrix variate distributions. On the other hand, Fang and Anderson collected research papers on matrix variate elliptical distributions, many of them published for the first time in English. They published very rich material on the topic, but the results are given in paper form which does not provide a unified treatment of the theory. Therefore, it seemed appropriate to collect the most important results on the theory of matrix variate elliptically contoured distributions available in the literature and organize them in a unified manner that can serve as an introduction to the subject. The book will be useful for researchers, teachers, and graduate students in statistics and related fields whose interests involve multivariate statistical analysis. Parts of this book were presented by Arjun K Gupta as a one semester course at Bowling Green State University. Some new results have also been included which generalize the results in Fang and Zhang. Knowledge of matrix algebra and statistics at the level of Anderson is assumed. However, Chapter 1 summarizes some results of matrix algebra.

Simple and effective techniques for quickly estimating virtually anythingGuesstimation 2.0 reveals the simple and effective techniques needed to estimate virtually anything—quickly—and illustrates them using an eclectic array of problems. A stimulating follow-up to Guesstimation, this is the must-have book for anyone preparing for a job interview in technology or finance, where more and more leading businesses test applicants using estimation questions just like these.The ability to guesstimate on your feet is an essential skill to have in today's world, whether you're trying to distinguish between a billion-dollar subsidy and a trillion-dollar stimulus, a megawatt wind turbine and a gigawatt nuclear plant, or parts-per-million and parts-per-billion contaminants. Lawrence Weinstein begins with a concise tutorial on how to solve these kinds of order of magnitude problems, and then invites readers to have a go themselves. The book features dozens of problems along with helpful hints and easy-to-understand solutions. It also includes appendixes containing useful formulas and more.Guesstimation 2.0 shows how to estimate everything from how closely you can orbit a neutron star without being pulled apart by gravity, to the fuel used to transport your food from the farm to the store, to the total length of all toilet paper used in the United States. It also enables readers to answer, once and for all, the most asked environmental question of our day: paper or plastic?

This book contains the proceedings of the KIER-TMU International Workshop on Financial Engineering 2010, which was held in Tokyo, in order to exchange new ideas in financial engineering among industry professionals and researchers from various countries. It has been held for two consecutive years since 2009, as a successor to the Daiwa International Workshop, which was held from 2004 to 2008, and is organized by the Institute of Economic Research of Kyoto University (KIER) and the Graduate School of Social Sciences of Tokyo Metropolitan University (TMU).The workshop serves as a bridge between academic researchers and practitioners. This book consists of eleven papers — all refereed — representing or related to the presentations at the workshop. The papers address state-of-the-art techniques in financial engineering. The Proceedings of the 2009 workshop was also published by World Scientific Publishing.

This book collects contributions written by well-known statisticians and econometricians to acknowledge Léopold Simar's far-reaching scientific impact on Statistics and Econometrics throughout his career. The papers contained herein were presented at a conference inLouvain-la-Neuve in May 2009 in honor of his retirement. The contributions cover a broad variety of issues surrounding frontierestimation, which Léopold Simar has contributed much to over the past two decades, as well as related issues such as semiparametric regression and models for censored data.This book collects contributions written by well-known statisticians and econometricians to acknowledge Léopold Simar's far-reaching scientific impact on Statistics and Econometrics throughout his career. The papers contained herein were presented at a conference inLouvain-la-Neuve in May 2009 in honor of his retirement. The contributions cover a broad variety of issues surrounding frontierestimation, which Léopold Simar has contributed much to over the past two decades, as well as related issues such as semiparametric regression and models for censored data.

This book consists of 11 papers based on research presented at the KIER-TMU International Workshop on Financial Engineering, held in Tokyo in 2009. The Workshop, organised by Kyoto University's Institute of Economic Research (KIER) and Tokyo Metropolitan University (TMU), is the successor to the Daiwa International Workshop on Financial Engineering held from 2004 to 2008 by Professor Kijima (the Chair of this Workshop) and his colleagues. Academic researchers and industry practitioners alike have presented the latest research on financial engineering at this international venue.These papers address state-of-the-art techniques in financial engineering, and have undergone a rigorous selection process to make this book a high-quality one. This volume will be of interest to academics, practitioners, and graduate students in the field of quantitative finance and financial engineering.

Over the course of the last twenty years, research in data mining has seen a substantial increase in interest, attracting original contributions from various disciplines including computer science, statistics, operations research, and information systems. Data mining supports a wide range of applications, from medical decision making, bioinformatics, web-usage mining, and text and image recognition to prominent business applications in corporate planning, direct marketing, and credit scoring. Research in information systems equally reflects this inter- and multidisciplinary approach, thereby advocating a series of papers at the intersection of data mining and information systems research. This special issue of Annals of Information Systems contains original papers and substantial extensions of selected papers from the 2007 and 2008 International Conference on Data Mining (DMIN'07 and DMIN'08, Las Vegas, NV) that have been rigorously peer-reviewed. The issue brings together topics on both information systems and data mining, and aims to give the reader a current snapshot of the contemporary research and state of the art practice in data mining.

This volume contains a collection of papers dedicated to Professor Eckhard Platen to celebrate his 60th birthday, which occurred in 2009. The contributions have been written by a number of his colleagues and co-authors. All papers have been - viewed and presented as keynote talks at the international conference “Quantitative Methods in Finance” (QMF) in Sydney in December 2009. The QMF Conference Series was initiated by Eckhard Platen in 1993 when he was at the Australian - tional University (ANU) in Canberra. Since joining UTS in 1997 the conference came to be organised on a much larger scale and has grown to become a signi?cant international event in quantitative?nance. Professor Platen has held the Chair of Quantitative Finance at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) jointly in the Faculties of Business and Science since 1997. Prior to this appointment, he was the Founding Head of the Centre for Fin- cial Mathematics at the Institute of Advanced Studies at ANU, a position to which he was appointed in 1994. Eckhard completed a PhD in Mathematics at the Technical University in Dresden in 1975 and in 1985 obtained his Doctor of Science degree (Habilitation degree in the German system) from the Academy of Sciences in Berlin where he headed the Stochastics group at the Weierstrass Institute.

This Volume of'Advances in Econometrics'contains a selection of papers presented initially at the 7th Annual Advances in Econometrics Conference held on the LSU campus in Baton Rouge, Louisiana during November 14-16, 2008. The theme of the conference was'Nonparametric Econometric Methods', and the papers selected for inclusion in this Volume span a range of nonparametric techniques including kernel smoothing, empirical copulas, series estimators, and smoothing splines along with a variety of semiparametric methods. The papers in this Volume cover topics of interest to those who wish to familiarize themselves with current nonparametric methodology. Many papers also identify areas deserving of future attention. There exist survey papers devoted to recent developments in nonparametric nance, constrained nonparametric regression, miparametric/nonparametric environmental econometrics and nonparametric models with non-stationary data. There exist theoretical papers dealing with novel approaches for partial identification of the distribution of treatment effects, xed effects semiparametric panel data models, functional coefficient models with time series data, exponential series estimators of empirical copulas, estimation of multivariate CDFs and bias-reduction methods for density estimation. There also exist a number of applications that analyze returns to education, the evolution of income and life expectancy, the role of governance in growth, farm production, city size and unemployment rates, derivative pricing, and environmental pollution and economic growth. In short, this Volume contains a range of theoretical developments, surveys, and applications that would be of interest to those who wish to keep abreast of some of the most important current developments in the field of nonparametric estimation.

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of technical assistance provided by AFRITAC West (AFW) in the area of national accounts using the Fund's Technical Assistance Information Management System (TAIMS). The challenge has been to report on'ultimate outcomes'(i.e., the production and dissemination of national accounts statistics along best international practices) rather than on'inputs'(i.e., the number of national accounts missions fielded by AFW), as it has been the case to date. The paper concludes that the'ultimate outcome'of producing and disseminating robust national accounts is work in progress, with AFW's technical assistance efforts mainly focusing on source data assessments and methodological issues underpinning the compilation of national accounts. The pending challenge is to further support a more timely production and dissemination of national accounts data, as recommended in the Data ROSCs and by the IMF mission teams to AFW member countries.