Probability; Applications of probability; Information theory; Statistical theory.

Contributed by world renowned researchers, the book features a wide range of important topics in modern statistical theory and methodology, economics and finance, ecology, education, health and sports studies, and computer and IT-data mining. It is accessible to students and of interest to experts.Many of the contributions are concerned with theoretical innovations, but all have applications in view, and some contain illustrations of the applied methods or photos of historic mathematicians.A few of the notable contributors are Ejaz Ahmed (Windsor), Joe Gani (ANU), Roger Gay (Monash), Atsuhiro Hayashi (NCUEE, Tokyo), Markus Hegland (ANU), Chris Heyde (ANU/Columbia), Jeff Hunter (Massey), Phil Lewis (Canberra), Heinz Neudecker (Amsterdam), Graham Pollard (Canberra), Simo Puntanen (Tampere), George Styan (McGill), and Goetz Trenkler (Dortmund).

Contributions to Statistics focuses on the processes, methodologies, and approaches involved in statistics. The book is presented to Professor P. C. Mahalanobis on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The selection first offers information on the recovery of ancillary information and combinatorial properties of partially balanced designs and association schemes. Discussions focus on combinatorial applications of the algebra of association matrices, sample size analogy, association matrices and the algebra of association schemes, and conceptual statistical experiments. The book then examines lattice sampling by means of Lahiri's sampling scheme; contributions of interpenetrating networks of samples; and apparently unconnected problems encountered in sampling work. The publication takes a look at screening processes, place of the design of experiments in the logic of scientific inference, and rarefaction. Topics include mathematical probability, scientific experience, combinatorial progress, gains and losses, criterion and scores, simple drug screening process, and screening of crop varieties. The manuscript then reviews the estimation and interpretation of gross differences and the simple response variance; partially balanced asymmetrical factorial designs; and approximation of distributions of sums of independent summands by infinitely divisible distributions. The selection is a dependable reference for statisticians and researchers interested in the processes, methodologies, and approaches employed in statistics.