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Advances in Biometry (Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics)

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This volume was edited by two world renown statisticians who have made major contributions to Biometry. It is a collection of 21 articles surveying statistical methods that were developed over the past 50 year and have had an impact on the science of biology (biometrics). The volume was proposed by Lynn Billard in 1996 to celebrate the 50th aniverary of the International Biometrics Society (IBS)and their journal Biometrics. Interesting accounts of the history of the society and the journal can be found in the first paper by Billard (then the President of the IBS)and the second paper by James. The third paper by Bradley and Anderson deals with an historical account of the contributions of the society and the journal to experimental design. Dagnelie provides an historical account of the teaching of biometry. The remaining papers are more technical and deal with special topics, all written by experts. Searle and McCulloch discuss the developments over the 50 year period 1945 to 1995 in linear models. Imrey, Koch and Preisser look at categorical data modeling. C. R. Rao talks about Hierarchical Bayesian procedures. Efron and Tibshirani discuss computer-intensive methods. Gower discusses multivariate analysis and multidimensional scaling. Anderson and Keiding cover survival analysis. Nelder covers statistical computing advances and the use of computer-intensive methods, graphics, computer algebra and expert systems and their impact on biostatistics. Patil covers ecology and environmental methods. Freeman and Riley discuss agriculture and forestry. Thomson deal with the latest hot topic - genetics. Breslow covers epidemiology and Dietz talks about infectious disease epidemology. Ware and Liang cover another important topic - longitudal studies. Diggle covers spatial data analysis. Glasbey and Berman review image analysis. The articles are well written and scholarly and most are great reference articles for historical developments up to 1996. This is a rapidly evolving and important field. Many statistician including me, have moved into biostatistics from other fields and now work in the medical device or pharmaceutical industry. To us, this in an invaluable reference source.
The field has continued to advance over the past 4 years. Still this book establishes a foundation and provides an historical perspective to the methods that we current use and continue to research.