This book presents a unique collection of contributions on modern topics in statistics and econometrics, written by leading experts in the respective disciplines and their intersections. It addresses nonparametric statistics and econometrics, quantiles and expectiles, and advanced methods for complex data, including spatial and compositional data, as well as tools for empirical studies in economics and the social sciences. The book was written in honor of Christine Thomas-Agnan on the occasion of her 65th birthday. Given its scope, it will appeal to researchers and PhD students in statistics and econometrics alike who are interested in the latest developments in their field.

Describes basic principles and recent developments in approximate query processing. It focuses on four key synopses: random samples, histograms, wavelets, and sketches. It considers issues such as accuracy, space and time efficiency, optimality, practicality, range of applicability, error bounds on query answers, and incremental maintenance.

Modern Directional Statistics collects important advances in methodology and theory for directional statistics over the last two decades. It provides a detailed overview and analysis of recent results that can help both researchers and practitioners. Knowledge of multivariate statistics eases the reading but is not mandatory. The field of directional statistics has received a lot of attention over the past two decades, due to new demands from domains such as life sciences or machine learning, to the availability of massive data sets requiring adapted statistical techniques, and to technological advances. This book covers important progresses in distribution theory,high-dimensional statistics, kernel density estimation, efficient inference on directional supports, and computational and graphical methods. Christophe Ley is professor of mathematical statistics at Ghent University. His research interests include semi-parametrically efficient inference, flexible modeling, directional statistics and the study of asymptotic approximations via Stein’s Method. His achievements include the Marie-Jeanne Laurent-Duhamel prize of the Société Française de Statistique and an elected membership at the International Statistical Institute. He is associate editor for the journals Computational Statistics & Data Analysis and Econometrics and Statistics. Thomas Verdebout is professor of mathematical statistics at Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). His main research interests are semi-parametric statistics, high- dimensional statistics, directional statistics and rank-based procedures. He has won an annual prize of the Belgian Academy of Sciences and is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He is associate editor for the journals Statistics and Probability Letters and Journal of Multivariate Analysis.

A Hands-On Way to Learning Data AnalysisPart of the core of statistics, linear models are used to make predictions and explain the relationship between the response and the predictors. Understanding linear models is crucial to a broader competence in the practice of statistics. Linear Models with R, Second Edition explains how to use linear models

Hands-on text for a first course aimed at end-users, focusing on concepts, practical issues and problem solving.

Image Analysis of Food Microstructure offers a condensed guide to the most common procedures and techniques by which quantitative microstructural information about food can be obtained from images. The images are selected from a broad range of food items, including macroscopic images of meat and finished products such as pizza, and the microstructu

This book is the outcome of a NATO Advanced Study Institute on Pattern Recog nition Theory and Applications held in Spa-Balmoral, Belgium, in June 1986. This Institute was the third of a series which started in 1975 in Bandol, France, at the initia tive of Professors K. S. Fu and A. Whinston, and continued in 1981 in Oxford, UK, with Professors K. S. Fu, J. Kittler and L. -F. Pau as directors. As early as in 1981, plans were made to pursue the series in about 1986 and possibly in Belgium, with Professor K. S. Fu and the present editors as directors. Unfortunately, Ie sort en decida autrement: Professor Fu passed away in the spring of 1985. His sudden death was an irreparable loss to the scientific community and to all those who knew him as an inspiring colleague, a teacher or a dear friend. Soon after, Josef Kittler and I decided to pay a small tribute to his memory by helping some of his plans to materialize. With the support of the NATO Scientific Affairs Division, the Institute became a reality. It was therefore but natural that the proceedings of the Institute be dedicated to him. The book contains most of the papers that were presented at the Institute. Papers are grouped along major themes which hopefully represent the major areas of contem porary research. These are: 1. Statistical methods and clustering techniques 2. Probabilistic relaxation techniques 3. From Markovian to connectionist models 4.