Summary: | "This volume honors the 40th anniversary of the Statistical Society of Canada and celebrates Canadian statistics and statisticians. Along with the history and status of statistics in Canada, the book presents a number of interesting statistical contributions from various leading Canadian statisticians. It covers a range of topics in statistics, including survey methodology, survival analysis, genetic modeling, Bayesian methods, statistical models in medicine and epidemiology, risk assessment, and much more"-- "Statistics plays an essential role in diverse elds of human endeavor, including physical science and technology, medicine, public health, the social and behavioral sciences, economics and business. It is the unacknowledged workhorse of scienti c analysis and prediction aimed at everything from organ transplants to climate science to nancial products. At the same time, the emerging eld of \big data" the vast troves of data generated by advancing technology suggests future directions of a eld that continues to develop. Yet, the breadth and in uence of statistics is largely unknown among the general public. The expository articles in this volume describe some of the contributions of Canadian statisticians and illustrate the breadth and impact of the eld. My hope is that the picture they provide of statistics in action" will stimulate readers from many backgrounds. Those wishing to nd out more about statistics (or statistical science) might consult Statistics in the 21st Century (Chapman and Hall/CRC Press, 2002) and a volume prepared by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) for the International Year of Statistics, Past, Present, and Future of Statistical Science (Chapman and Hall/CRC Press, 2014). In the rst article here, Bellhouse and Fienberg review the development of statistics as a discipline in Canada. They note the close relationship with statistics groups in the United States, and the extent to which early generations of Canadian statisticians trained there. The following article by Beaumont, Fortier, Gambino, Hidiroglou and Lavallee describes some of the major contributions to survey methodology made at Statistics Canada, one of the world's premier official statistics agencies"--
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