Time series play a crucial role in modern economies at all levels of activity and are used by decision makers to plan for a better future. Before publication time series are subject to statistical adjustments and this is the first statistical book to systematically deal with the methods most often applied for such adjustments. Regression-based models are emphasized because of their clarity, ease of application, and superior results. Each topic is illustrated with real case examples. In order to facilitate understanding of their properties and limitations of the methods discussed a real data example is followed throughout the book.

Statistical offices have often recourse to benchmarking methods for compiling quarterly national accounts (QNA). Benchmarking methods employ quarterly indicator series (i) to distribute annual, more reliable series of national accounts and (ii) to extrapolate the most recent quarters not yet covered by annual benchmarks. The Proportional First Differences (PFD) benchmarking method proposed by Denton (1971) is a widely used solution for distribution, but in extrapolation it may suffer when the movements in the indicator series do not match consistently the movements in the target annual benchmarks. For this reason, an enhanced formula for extrapolation was recommended by the IMF’s Quarterly National Accounts Manual: Concepts, Data Sources, and Compilation (2001). We discuss the rationale behind this technique, and propose a matrix formulation of it. In addition, we present applications of the enhanced formula to artificial and real-life benchmarking examples showing how the extrapolations for the most recent quarters can be improved.

The use of computational methods in statistics to face complex problems and highly dimensional data, as well as the widespread availability of computer technology, is no news. The range of applications, instead, is unprecedented. As often occurs, new and complex data types require new strategies, demanding for the development of novel statistical methods and suggesting stimulating mathematical problems. This book is addressed to researchers working at the forefront of the statistical analysis of complex systems and using computationally intensive statistical methods.

This volume includes contributions selected after a double blind review process and presented as a preliminary version at the 45th Meeting of the Italian Statistical Society. The papers provide significant and innovative original contributions and cover a broad range of topics including: statistical theory; methods for time series and spatial data; statistical modeling and data analysis; survey methodology and official statistics; analysis of social, demographic and health data; and economic statistics and econometrics.

This revised book presents theoretical results relevant to Edgeworth and saddlepoint expansions to densities and distribution functions. It provides examples of their application in some simple and a few complicated settings, along with numerical, as well as asymptotic, assessments of their accuracy. Variants on these expansions, including much of modern likelihood theory, are discussed and applications to lattice distributions are extensively treated.

Applied Data Mining for Forecasting Using SAS, by Tim Rey, Arthur Kordon, and Chip Wells, introduces and describes approaches for mining large time series data sets. Written for forecasting practitioners, engineers, statisticians, and economists, the book details how to select useful candidate input variables for time series regression models in environments when the number of candidates is large, and identifies the correlation structure between selected candidate inputs and the forecast variable. This book is essential for forecasting practitioners who need to understand the practical issues involved in applied forecasting in a business setting. Through numerous real-world examples, the authors demonstrate how to effectively use SAS software to meet their industrial forecasting needs. This book is part of the SAS Press program.

Commissioned by the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC), Statistics in Action: A Canadian Outlook helps both general readers and users of statistics better appreciate the scope and importance of statistics. It presents the ways in which statistics is used while highlighting key contributions that Canadian statisticians are making to science, technology, business, government, and other areas. The book emphasizes the role and impact of computing in statistical modeling and analysis, including the issues involved with the huge amounts of data being generated by automated processes. The first two chapters review the development of statistics as a discipline in Canada and describe some major contributions to survey methodology made by Statistics Canada, one of the world’s premier official statistics agencies. The book next discusses how statistical methodologies, such as functional data analysis and the Metropolis algorithm, are applied in a wide variety of fields, including risk management and genetics. It then focuses on the application of statistical methods in medicine and public health as well as finance and e-commerce. The remainder of the book addresses how statistics is used to study critical scientific areas, including difficult-to-access populations, endangered species, climate change, and agricultural forecasts. About the SSC Founded in Montréal in 1972, the SSC is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in Canada. Its mission is to promote the use and development of statistics and probability. The SSC publishes the bilingual quarterly newsletter SSC Liaison and the peer-reviewed scientific journal The Canadian Journal of Statistics. More information can be found at www.ssc.ca.