Biological and biomedical studies have entered a new era over the past two decades thanks to the wide use of mathematical models and computational approaches. A booming of computational biology, which sheerly was a theoretician's fantasy twenty years ago, has become a reality. Obsession with computational biology and theoretical approaches is evidenced in articles hailing the arrival of what are va- ously called quantitative biology, bioinformatics, theoretical biology, and systems biology. New technologies and data resources in genetics, such as the International HapMap project, enable large-scale studies, such as genome-wide association st- ies, which could potentially identify most common genetic variants as well as rare variants of the human DNA that may alter individual's susceptibility to disease and the response to medical treatment. Meanwhile the multi-electrode recording from behaving animals makes it feasible to control the animal mental activity, which could potentially lead to the development of useful brain-machine interfaces. - bracing the sheer volume of genetic, genomic, and other type of data, an essential approach is, ?rst of all, to avoid drowning the true signal in the data. It has been witnessed that theoretical approach to biology has emerged as a powerful and st- ulating research paradigm in biological studies, which in turn leads to a new - search paradigm in mathematics, physics, and computer science and moves forward with the interplays among experimental studies and outcomes, simulation studies, and theoretical investigations.

Age-Period-Cohort analysis has a wide range of applications, from chronic disease incidence and mortality data in public health and epidemiology, to many social events (birth, death, marriage, etc) in social sciences and demography, and most recently investment, healthcare and pension contribution in economics and finance. Although APC analysis has been studied for the past 40 years and a lot of methods have been developed, the identification problem has been a major hurdle in analyzing APC data, where the regression model has multiple estimators, leading to indetermination of parameters and temporal trends. A Practical Guide to Age-Period Cohort Analysis: The Identification Problem and Beyond provides practitioners a guide to using APC models as well as offers graduate students and researchers an overview of the current methods for APC analysis while clarifying the confusion of the identification problem by explaining why some methods address the problem well while others do not. Features * Gives a comprehensive and in-depth review of models and methods in APC analysis. * Provides an in-depth explanation of the identification problem and statistical approaches to addressing the problem and clarifying the confusion. * Utilizes real data sets to illustrate different data issues that have not been addressed in the literature, including unequal intervals in age and period groups, etc. Contains step-by-step modeling instruction and R programs to demonstrate how to conduct APC analysis and how to conduct prediction for the future Reflects the most recent development in APC modeling and analysis including the intrinsic estimator Wenjiang Fu is a professor of statistics at the University of Houston. Professor Fu's research interests include modeling big data, applied statistics research in health and human genome studies, and analysis of complex economic and social science data.

Biological and biomedical studies have entered a new era over the past two decades thanks to the wide use of mathematical models and computational approaches. A booming of computational biology, which sheerly was a theoretician's fantasy twenty years ago, has become a reality. Obsession with computational biology and theoretical approaches is evidenced in articles hailing the arrival of what are va- ously called quantitative biology, bioinformatics, theoretical biology, and systems biology. New technologies and data resources in genetics, such as the International HapMap project, enable large-scale studies, such as genome-wide association st- ies, which could potentially identify most common genetic variants as well as rare variants of the human DNA that may alter individual's susceptibility to disease and the response to medical treatment. Meanwhile the multi-electrode recording from behaving animals makes it feasible to control the animal mental activity, which could potentially lead to the development of useful brain-machine interfaces. - bracing the sheer volume of genetic, genomic, and other type of data, an essential approach is, ?rst of all, to avoid drowning the true signal in the data. It has been witnessed that theoretical approach to biology has emerged as a powerful and st- ulating research paradigm in biological studies, which in turn leads to a new - search paradigm in mathematics, physics, and computer science and moves forward with the interplays among experimental studies and outcomes, simulation studies, and theoretical investigations.

Age-Period-Cohort analysis has a wide range of applications, from chronic disease incidence and mortality data in public health and epidemiology, to many social events (birth, death, marriage, etc) in social sciences and demography, and most recently investment, healthcare and pension contribution in economics and finance. Although APC analysis has been studied for the past 40 years and a lot of methods have been developed, the identification problem has been a major hurdle in analyzing APC data, where the regression model has multiple estimators, leading to indetermination of parameters and temporal trends. A Practical Guide to Age-Period Cohort Analysis: The Identification Problem and Beyond provides practitioners a guide to using APC models as well as offers graduate students and researchers an overview of the current methods for APC analysis while clarifying the confusion of the identification problem by explaining why some methods address the problem well while others do not. Features * Gives a comprehensive and in-depth review of models and methods in APC analysis. * Provides an in-depth explanation of the identification problem and statistical approaches to addressing the problem and clarifying the confusion. * Utilizes real data sets to illustrate different data issues that have not been addressed in the literature, including unequal intervals in age and period groups, etc. Contains step-by-step modeling instruction and R programs to demonstrate how to conduct APC analysis and how to conduct prediction for the future Reflects the most recent development in APC modeling and analysis including the intrinsic estimator Wenjiang Fu is a professor of statistics at the University of Houston. Professor Fu's research interests include modeling big data, applied statistics research in health and human genome studies, and analysis of complex economic and social science data.