An English translation now joins the Russian and Spanish versions. It is based on the newly revised fifth edition of the German version of the book. The original edition has become very popular as a learning and reference source with easy to follow recipes and cross references for scientists in fields such as engineering, chemistry and the life sciences. Little mathematical background is required of the reader and some important topics, like the logarithm, are dealt with in the preliminaries preceding chapter one. The usefulness of the book as a reference is enhanced by a number of convenient tables and by references to other tables and methods, both in the text and in the bibliography. The English edition contains more material than the German original. I am most grateful to all who have in conversations, letters or reviews suggested improvements in or criticized earlier editions. Comments and suggestions will continue to be welcome. We are especially grateful to Mrs. Dorothy Aeppli of St. Paul, Minnesota, for providing numerous valuable comments during the preparation of the English manuscript. The author and the translator are responsible for any remaining faults and imperfections. I welcome any suggestions for improvement. My greatest personal gratitude goes to the translator, Mr. Zenon Reynaro wych, whose skills have done much to clarify the text, and to Springer-Verlag.

This volume contains the proceedings of the AMS Special Session on Celebrating M. M. Rao's Many Mathematical Contributions as he Turns 90 Years Old, held from November 9–10, 2019, at the University of California, Riverside, California. The articles show the effectiveness of abstract analysis for solving fundamental problems of stochastic theory, specifically the use of functional analytic methods for elucidating stochastic processes and their applications. The volume also includes a biography of M. M. Rao and the list of his publications.

Computational inference is based on an approach to statistical methods that uses modern computational power to simulate distributional properties of estimators and test statistics. This book describes computationally intensive statistical methods in a unified presentation, emphasizing techniques, such as the PDF decomposition, that arise in a wide range of methods.

Aimed at advanced undergraduates and graduate students in mathematics and related disciplines, this engaging textbook gives a concise account of the main approaches to inference, with particular emphasis on the contrasts between them. It is the first textbook to synthesize contemporary material on computational topics with basic mathematical theory.