The kingsnakes and milksnakes of the Lampropeltis genus have been among the most popular snakes in terrariums for many years. Their manageable body size, bright colors and comparatively uncomplicated husbandry requirements make most species of non-venomous snakes suitable for beginners in the terrarium hobby. In the past decade, new studies have led to extensive changes in the taxonomic systematics of the king snakes. This book summarizes the currently valid taxonomy of the entire genus La...

This book, dedicated to Winfried Stute on the occasion of his 70th birthday, presents a unique collection of contributions by leading experts in statistics, stochastic processes, mathematical finance and insurance. The individual chapters cover a wide variety of topics ranging from nonparametric estimation, regression modelling and asymptotic bounds for estimators, to shot-noise processes in finance, option pricing and volatility modelling. The book also features review articles, e.g. on s...

In a world of increasing financial uncertainty and growing unemployment, the macroeconomic contribution of SMEs is more important than ever. Development of a vibrant, sustainable small firm sector is dependent on sufficient resourcing of SMEs, particularly adequate capitalisation. This book provides a timely examination of SME financing and determinants of capital structure. A special feature of this book is the novel methodological approach adopted, providing an innovative perspective on ...

This volume collects selected, peer-reviewed contributions from the 2nd Conference of the International Society for Nonparametric Statistics (ISNPS), held in Cádiz (Spain) between June 11–16 2014, and sponsored by the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability, the Journal of Nonparametric Statistics and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.The 15 articles are a representative sample of t...

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 advan...

The book provides a description of the process of health economic evaluation and modelling for cost-effectiveness analysis, particularly from the perspective of a Bayesian statistical approach. Some relevant theory and introductory concepts are presented using practical examples and two running case studies. The book also describes in detail how to perform health economic evaluations using the R package BCEA (Bayesian Cost-Effectiveness Analysis). BCEA can be used to post-process the resul...

William Q. Meeker has made pioneering and phenomenal contributions to the general areaofreliabilityand,inparticular,tothetopicsofdegradationandacceleratedtesting. Hisresearchpublicationsandthenumerouscitationshehasreceivedoverthepastthree decades provide an ample testimony to this fact. Statistical methods have become critical in analyzing reliability and survival data. Highly reliable products have necessitated the development of accelerated testing and degradation models and their analys...

This book offers a collection of recent contributions and emerging ideas in the areas of robust statistics presented at the International Conference on Robust Statistics 2015 (ICORS 2015) held in Kolkata during 12–16 January, 2015. The book explores the applicability of robust methods in other non-traditional areas which includes the use of new techniques such as skew and mixture of skew distributions, scaled Bregman divergences, and multilevel functional data methods; application areas be...

This book offers a snapshot of the state-of-the-art in classification at the interface between statistics, computer science and application fields. The contributions span a broad spectrum, from theoretical developments to practical applications; they all share a strong computational component. The topics addressed are from the following fields: Statistics and Data Analysis; Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery; Data Analysis in Marketing; Data Analysis in Finance and Economics; Data An...

This book presents a broad range of statistical techniques to address emerging needs in the field of repeated measures. It also provides a comprehensive overview of extensions of generalized linear models for the bivariate exponential family of distributions, which represent a new development in analysing repeated measures data. The demand for statistical models for correlated outcomes has grown rapidly recently, mainly due to presence of two types of underlying associations: associations ...

The modern world is brimming with statistical information—information relevant to our personal health and safety, the weather, or the robustness of the national or global economy, to name just a few examples. But don’t statistics lie?Well, no—people lie, and sometimes they use statistical language to do it. Knowing when you’re being hoodwinked requires a degree of statistical literacy, but most people don’t learn how to interpret statistical claims unless they take a forma...

This book introduces academic researchers and professionals to the basic concepts and methods for characterizing interdependencies of multiple time series in the frequency domain. Detecting causal directions between a pair of time series and the extent of their effects, as well as testing the non existence of a feedback relation between them, have constituted major focal points in multiple time series analysis since Granger introduced the celebrated definition of causality in view of predi...