This book brings together selected peer-reviewed contributions from various research fields in statistics, and highlights the diverse approaches and analyses related to real-life phenomena. Major topics covered in this volume include, but are not limited to, bayesian inference, likelihood approach, pseudo-likelihoods, regression, time series, and data analysis as well as applications in the life and social sciences. The software packages used in the papers are made available by the authors. This book is a result of the 47th Scientific Meeting of the Italian Statistical Society, held at the University of Cagliari, Italy, in 2014.

Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) has become a standard approach for analyzing complex inter-relationships between observed and latent variables. Researchers appreciate the many advantages of PLS-SEM such as the possibility to estimate very complex models and the method's flexibility in terms of data requirements and measurement specification. This practical open access guide provides a step-by-step treatment of the major choices in analyzing PLS path models using R, a free software environment for statistical computing, which runs on Windows, macOS, and UNIX computer platforms. Adopting the R software's SEMinR package, which brings a friendly syntax to creating and estimating structural equation models, each chapter offers a concise overview of relevant topics and metrics, followed by an in-depth description of a case study. Simple instructions give readers the "how-tos" of using SEMinR to obtain solutions and document their results. Rules of thumb in every chapter provide guidance on best practices in the application and interpretation of PLS-SEM.

Graphics are great for exploring data, but how can they be used for looking at the large datasets that are commonplace to-day? This book shows how to look at ways of visualizing large datasets, whether large in numbers of cases or large in numbers of variables or large in both. Data visualization is useful for data cleaning, exploring data, identifying trends and clusters, spotting local patterns, evaluating modeling output, and presenting results. It is essential for exploratory data analysis and data mining. Data analysts, statisticians, computer scientists-indeed anyone who has to explore a large dataset of their own-should benefit from reading this book.

New approaches to graphics are needed to visualize the information in large datasets and most of the innovations described in this book are developments of standard graphics. There are considerable advantages in extending displays which are well-known and well-tried, both in understanding how best to make use of them in your work and in presenting results to others. It should also make the book readily accessible for readers who already have a little experience of drawing statistical graphics. All ideas are illustrated with displays from analyses of real datasets and the authors emphasize the importance of interpreting displays effectively. Graphics should be drawn to convey information and the book includes many insightful examples.

From the reviews:

"Anyone interested in modern techniques for visualizing data will be well rewarded by reading this book. There is a wealth of important plotting types and techniques." Paul Murrell for the Journal of Statistical Software, December 2006

"This fascinating book looks at the question of visualizing large datasets from many different perspectives. Different authors are responsible for different chapters and this approach works well in giving the reader alternative viewpoints of the same problem. Interestingly the authors have cleverly chosen a definition of 'large dataset'. Essentially they focus on datasets with the order of a million cases. As the authors point out there are now many examples of much larger datasets but by limiting to ones that can be loaded in their entirety in standard statistical software they end up with a book that has great utility to the practitioner rather than just the theorist. Another very attractive feature of the book is the many colour plates, showing clearly what can now routinely be seen on the computer screen. The interactive nature of data analysis with large datasets is hard to reproduce in a book but the authors make an excellent attempt to do just this." P. Marriott for the Short Book Reviews of the ISI

Easy Statistics for Food Science with R presents the application of statistical techniques to assist students and researchers who work in food science and food engineering in choosing the appropriate statistical technique. The book focuses on the use of univariate and multivariate statistical methods in the field of food science. The techniques are presented in a simplified form without relying on complex mathematical proofs. This book was written to help researchers from different fields to analyze their data and make valid decisions. The development of modern statistical packages makes the analysis of data easier than before. The book focuses on the application of statistics and correct methods for the analysis and interpretation of data. R statistical software is used throughout the book to analyze the data.

A unique point of this book is its low threshold, textually simple and at the same time full of self-assessment opportunities. Other unique points are the succinctness of the chapters with 3 to 6 pages, the presence of entire-commands-texts of the statistical methodologies reviewed and the fact that dull scientific texts imposing an unnecessary burden on busy and jaded professionals have been left out. For readers requesting more background, theoretical and mathematical information a note section with references is in each chapter. The first edition in 2010 was the first publication of a complete overview of SPSS methodologies for medical and health statistics. Well over 100,000 copies of various chapters were sold within the first year of publication. Reasons for a rewrite were four. First, many important comments from readers urged for a rewrite. Second, SPSS has produced many updates and upgrades, with relevant novel and improved methodologies. Third, the authors felt that the chapter texts needed some improvements for better readability: chapters have now been classified according the outcome data helpful for choosing your analysis rapidly, a schematic overview of data, and explanatory graphs have been added. Fourth, current data are increasingly complex and many important methods for analysis were missing in the first edition. For that latter purpose some more advanced methods seemed unavoidable, like hierarchical loglinear methods, gamma and Tweedie regressions and random intercept analyses. In order for the contents of the book to remain covered by the title, the authors renamed the book: SPSS for Starters and 2nd Levelers. Special care was, nonetheless, taken to keep things as simple as possible, simple menu commands are given. The arithmetic is still of a no-more-than high-school level. Step-by-step analyses of different statistical methodologies are given with the help of 60 SPSS data files available through the internet. Because of the lack of time of this busy group of people, the authors have given every effort to produce a text as succinct as possible.

"Bayesian Networks and Influence Diagrams: A Guide to Construction and Analysis, Second Edition, "provides a comprehensive guide for practitioners who wish to understand, construct, and analyze intelligent systems for decision support based on probabilistic networks. This new edition contains six new sections, in addition to fully-updated examples, tables, figures, and a revised appendix. Intended primarily for practitioners, this book does not require sophisticated mathematical skills or deep understanding of the underlying theory and methods nor does it discuss alternative technologies for reasoning under uncertainty. The theory and methods presented are illustrated through more than 140 examples, and exercises are included for the reader to check his or her level of understanding. The techniques and methods presented for knowledge elicitation, model construction and verification, modeling techniques and tricks, learning models from data, and analyses of models have all been developed and refined on the basis of numerous courses that the authors have held for practitioners worldwide. "

This book provides a general introduction to Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods, also known as particle filters. These methods have become a staple for the sequential analysis of data in such diverse fields as signal processing, epidemiology, machine learning, population ecology, quantitative finance, and robotics. The coverage is comprehensive, ranging from the underlying theory to computational implementation, methodology, and diverse applications in various areas of science. This is achieved by describing SMC algorithms as particular cases of a general framework, which involves concepts such as Feynman-Kac distributions, and tools such as importance sampling and resampling. This general framework is used consistently throughout the book. Extensive coverage is provided on sequential learning (filtering, smoothing) of state-space (hidden Markov) models, as this remains an important application of SMC methods. More recent applications, such as parameter estimation of these models (through e.g. particle Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques) and the simulation of challenging probability distributions (in e.g. Bayesian inference or rare-event problems), are also discussed. The book may be used either as a graduate text on Sequential Monte Carlo methods and state-space modeling, or as a general reference work on the area. Each chapter includes a set of exercises for self-study, a comprehensive bibliography, and a "Python corner," which discusses the practical implementation of the methods covered. In addition, the book comes with an open source Python library, which implements all the algorithms described in the book, and contains all the programs that were used to perform the numerical experiments.

This book provides comprehensive coverage of the field of outlier analysis from a computer science point of view. It integrates methods from data mining, machine learning, and statistics within the computational framework and therefore appeals to multiple communities. The chapters of this book can be organized into three categories: Basic algorithms: Chapters 1 through 7 discuss the fundamental algorithms for outlier analysis, including probabilistic and statistical methods, linear methods, proximity-based methods, high-dimensional (subspace) methods, ensemble methods, and supervised methods. Domain-specific methods: Chapters 8 through 12 discuss outlier detection algorithms for various domains of data, such as text, categorical data, time-series data, discrete sequence data, spatial data, and network data. Applications: Chapter 13 is devoted to various applications of outlier analysis. Some guidance is also provided for the practitioner. The second edition of this book is more detailed and is written to appeal to both researchers and practitioners. Significant new material has been added on topics such as kernel methods, one-class support-vector machines, matrix factorization, neural networks, outlier ensembles, time-series methods, and subspace methods. It is written as a textbook and can be used for classroom teaching.

By the end of this book, the reader will understand: the difficulties of finding a needle in a haystack; creative solutions to address the problem; unique ways of engineering features and solving the problem of the lack of data (e.g. synthetic data). Additionally, the reader will be able to: avoid mistakes resulting from a lack of understanding; search for appropriate methods of feature engineering; locate the relevant technological solutions within the general context of decision-making.

Praise for the first edition: [This book] reflects the extensive experience and significant contributions of the author to non-linear and non-Gaussian modeling. ... [It] is a valuable book, especially with its broad and accessible introduction of models in the state-space framework. -Statistics in Medicine What distinguishes this book from comparable introductory texts is the use of state-space modeling. Along with this come a number of valuable tools for recursive filtering and smoothing, including the Kalman filter, as well as non-Gaussian and sequential Monte Carlo filters. -MAA Reviews Introduction to Time Series Modeling with Applications in R, Second Edition covers numerous stationary and nonstationary time series models and tools for estimating and utilizing them. The goal of this book is to enable readers to build their own models to understand, predict and master time series. The second edition makes it possible for readers to reproduce examples in this book by using the freely available R package TSSS to perform computations for their own real-world time series problems. This book employs the state-space model as a generic tool for time series modeling and presents the Kalman filter, the non-Gaussian filter and the particle filter as convenient tools for recursive estimation for state-space models. Further, it also takes a unified approach based on the entropy maximization principle and employs various methods of parameter estimation and model selection, including the least squares method, the maximum likelihood method, recursive estimation for state-space models and model selection by AIC. Along with the standard stationary time series models, such as the AR and ARMA models, the book also introduces nonstationary time series models such as the locally stationary AR model, the trend model, the seasonal adjustment model, the time-varying coefficient AR model and nonlinear non-Gaussian state-space models. About the Author: Genshiro Kitagawa is a project professor at the University of Tokyo, the former Director-General of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, and the former President of the Research Organization of Information and Systems.

This book presents a theoretical and practical overview of computational modeling in bioengineering, focusing on a range of applications including electrical stimulation of neural and cardiac tissue, implantable drug delivery, cancer therapy, biomechanics, cardiovascular dynamics, as well as fluid-structure interaction for modelling of organs, tissues, cells and devices. It covers the basic principles of modeling and simulation with ordinary and partial differential equations using MATLAB and COMSOL Multiphysics numerical software. The target audience primarily comprises postgraduate students and researchers, but the book may also be beneficial for practitioners in the medical device industry.

A comprehensive introduction to various numerical methods used in computational finance today

Quantitative skills are a prerequisite for anyone working in finance or beginning a career in the field, as well as risk managers. A thorough grounding in numerical methods is necessary, as is the ability to assess their quality, advantages, and limitations. This book offers a thorough introduction to each method, revealing the numerical traps that practitioners frequently fall into. Each method is referenced with practical, real-world examples in the areas of valuation, risk analysis, and calibration of specific financial instruments and models. It features a strong emphasis on robust schemes for the numerical treatment of problems within computational finance. Methods covered include PDE/PIDE using finite differences or finite elements, fast and stable solvers for sparse grid systems, stabilization and regularization techniques for inverse problems resulting from the calibration of financial models to market data, Monte Carlo and Quasi Monte Carlo techniques for simulating high dimensional systems, and local and global optimization tools to solve the minimization problem.

This book covers using R for doing optimization, a key area of operations research, which has been applied to virtually every industry. The focus is on linear and mixed integer optimization. It uses an algebraic modeling approach for creating formulations that pairs naturally with an algebraic implementation in R. With the rapid rise of interest in data analytics, a data analytics platform is key. Working technology and business professionals need an awareness of the tools and language of data analysis. R reduces the barrier to entry for people to start using data analytics tools. Philosophically, the book emphasizes creating formulations before going into implementation. Algebraic representation allows for clear understanding and generalization of large applications, and writing formulations is necessary to explain and convey the modeling decisions made. Appendix A introduces R. Mathematics is used at the level of subscripts and summations Refreshers are provided in Appendix B. This book: * Provides and explains code so examples are relatively clear and self-contained. * Emphasizes creating algebraic formulations before implementing. * Focuses on application rather than algorithmic details. * Embodies the philosophy of reproducible research. * Uses open-source tools to ensure access to powerful optimization tools. * Promotes open-source: all materials are available on the author's github repository. * Demonstrates common debugging practices with a troubleshooting emphasis specific to optimization modeling using R. * Provides code readers can adapt to their own applications . This book can be used for graduate and undergraduate courses for students without a background in optimization and with varying mathematical backgrounds.

This book describes Python3 programming resources for implementing decision aiding algorithms in the context of a bipolar-valued outranking approach. These computing resources, made available under the name Digraph3, are useful in the field of Algorithmic Decision Theory and more specifically in outranking-based Multiple-Criteria Decision Aiding (MCDA). The first part of the book presents a set of tutorials introducing the Digraph3 collection of Python3 modules and its main objects, such as bipolar-valued digraphs and outranking digraphs. In eight methodological chapters, the second part illustrates multiple-criteria evaluation models and decision algorithms. These chapters are largely problem-oriented and demonstrate how to edit a new multiple-criteria performance tableau, how to build a best choice recommendation, how to compute the winner of an election and how to make rankings or ratings using incommensurable criteria. The book's third part presents three real-world decision case studies, while the fourth part addresses more advanced topics, such as computing ordinal correlations between bipolar-valued outranking digraphs, computing kernels in bipolar-valued digraphs, testing for confidence or stability of outranking statements when facing uncertain or solely ordinal criteria significance weights, and tempering plurality tyranny effects in social choice problems. The fifth and last part is more specifically focused on working with undirected graphs, tree graphs and forests. The closing chapter explores comparability, split, interval and permutation graphs. The book is primarily intended for graduate students in management sciences, computational statistics and operations research. The chapters presenting algorithms for ranking multicriteria performance records will be of computational interest for designers of web recommender systems. Similarly, the relative and absolute quantile-rating algorithms, discussed and illustrated in several chapters, will be of practical interest to public and private performance auditors.

Immediately implementable code, with extensive and varied illustrations of graph variants and layouts. Examples and exercises across a variety of real-life contexts including business, politics, education, social media and crime investigation. Dedicated chapter on graph visualization methods. Practical walkthroughs of common methodological uses: finding influential actors in groups, discovering hidden community structures, facilitating diverse interaction in organizations, detecting political alignment, determining what influences connection and attachment. Various downloadable data sets for use both in class and individual learning projects. Final chapter dedicated to individual or group project examples.

Immediately implementable code, with extensive and varied illustrations of graph variants and layouts. Examples and exercises across a variety of real-life contexts including business, politics, education, social media and crime investigation. Dedicated chapter on graph visualization methods. Practical walkthroughs of common methodological uses: finding influential actors in groups, discovering hidden community structures, facilitating diverse interaction in organizations, detecting political alignment, determining what influences connection and attachment. Various downloadable data sets for use both in class and individual learning projects. Final chapter dedicated to individual or group project examples.

Since 1984, Geophysical Data Analysis has filled the need for a short, concise reference on inverse theory for individuals who have an intermediate background in science and mathematics. The new edition maintains the accessible and succinct manner for which it is known, with the addition of: MATLAB examples and problem sets Advanced color graphics Coverage of new topics, including Adjoint Methods; Inversion by Steepest Descent, Monte Carlo and Simulated Annealing methods; and Bootstrap algorithm for determining empirical confidence intervals

Highly recommended by JASA, Technometrics, and other leading statistical journals, the first two editions of this bestseller showed how to easily perform complex linear mixed model (LMM) analyses via a variety of software programs. Linear Mixed Models: A Practical Guide Using Statistical Software, Third Edition continues to lead readers step-by-step through the process of fitting LMMs. The third edition provides a comprehensive update of the available tools for fitting linear mixed-effects models in the newest versions of SAS, SPSS, R, Stata, and HLM. All examples have been updated, with a focus on new tools for visualization of results and interpretation. New conceptual and theoretical developments in mixed-effects modeling have been included, and there is a new chapter on power analysis for mixed-effects models. Features:*Dedicates an entire chapter to the key theories underlying LMMs for clustered, longitudinal, and repeated measures data *Provides descriptions, explanations, and examples of software code necessary to fit LMMs in SAS, SPSS, R, Stata, and HLM *Contains detailed tables of estimates and results, allowing for easy comparisons across software procedures *Presents step-by-step analyses of real-world data sets that arise from a variety of research settings and study designs, including hypothesis testing, interpretation of results, and model diagnostics *Integrates software code in each chapter to compare the relative advantages and disadvantages of each package *Supplemented by a website with software code, datasets, additional documents, and updates Ideal for anyone who uses software for statistical modeling, this book eliminates the need to read multiple software-specific texts by covering the most popular software programs for fitting LMMs in one handy guide. The authors illustrate the models and methods through real-world examples that enable comparisons of model-fitting options and results across the software procedures.

This book is a valuable read for a diverse group of researchers and practitioners who analyze assessment data and construct test instruments. It focuses on the use of classical test theory (CTT) and item response theory (IRT), which are often required in the fields of psychology (e.g. for measuring psychological traits), health (e.g. for measuring the severity of disorders), and education (e.g. for measuring student performance), and makes these analytical tools accessible to a broader audience. Having taught assessment subjects to students from diverse backgrounds for a number of years, the three authors have a wealth of experience in presenting educational measurement topics, in-depth concepts and applications in an accessible format. As such, the book addresses the needs of readers who use CTT and IRT in their work but do not necessarily have an extensive mathematical background. The book also sheds light on common misconceptions in applying measurement models, and presents an integrated approach to different measurement methods, such as contrasting CTT with IRT and multidimensional IRT models with unidimensional IRT models. Wherever possible, comparisons between models are explicitly made. In addition, the book discusses concepts for test equating and differential item functioning, as well as Bayesian IRT models and plausible values using simple examples. This book can serve as a textbook for introductory courses on educational measurement, as supplementary reading for advanced courses, or as a valuable reference guide for researchers interested in analyzing student assessment data.

Now in its second edition, Text Analysis with R provides a practical introduction to computational text analysis using the open source programming language R. R is an extremely popular programming language, used throughout the sciences; due to its accessibility, R is now used increasingly in other research areas. In this volume, readers immediately begin working with text, and each chapter examines a new technique or process, allowing readers to obtain a broad exposure to core R procedures and a fundamental understanding of the possibilities of computational text analysis at both the micro and the macro scale. Each chapter builds on its predecessor as readers move from small scale "microanalysis" of single texts to large scale "macroanalysis" of text corpora, and each concludes with a set of practice exercises that reinforce and expand upon the chapter lessons. The book's focus is on making the technical palatable and making the technical useful and immediately gratifying. Text Analysis with R is written with students and scholars of literature in mind but will be applicable to other humanists and social scientists wishing to extend their methodological toolkit to include quantitative and computational approaches to the study of text. Computation provides access to information in text that readers simply cannot gather using traditional qualitative methods of close reading and human synthesis. This new edition features two new chapters: one that introduces dplyr and tidyr in the context of parsing and analyzing dramatic texts to extract speaker and receiver data, and one on sentiment analysis using the syuzhet package. It is also filled with updated material in every chapter to integrate new developments in the field, current practices in R style, and the use of more efficient algorithms.

Matrix Algorithms in MATLAB focuses on the MATLAB code implementations of matrix algorithms. The MATLAB codes presented in the book are tested with thousands of runs of MATLAB randomly generated matrices, and the notation in the book follows the MATLAB style to ensure a smooth transition from formulation to the code, with MATLAB codes discussed in this book kept to within 100 lines for the sake of clarity. The book provides an overview and classification of the interrelations of various algorithms, as well as numerous examples to demonstrate code usage and the properties of the presented algorithms. Despite the wide availability of computer programs for matrix computations, it continues to be an active area of research and development. New applications, new algorithms, and improvements to old algorithms are constantly emerging.

*Systematically introducing major components of SPM process. *Novel hybrid methods (228 hybrids plus numerous variants) of modern statistical methods or machine learning methods with mathematical and/or univariate geostatistical methods. *Novel predictive accuracy-based variable selection techniques for spatial predictive methods. *Predictive accuracy-based parameter/model optimization. *Reproducible examples for SPM of various data types in R.