Computational statistics with R (Q479005)

This volume and the previous volumes in the Handbook of Statistics series will certainly constitute a valuable aid for a large number of researchers in different fields of science. Volume 9 of the Handbook of Statistics series ``Computational statistics'' [Zbl 0779.00010], edited by C. R. Rao in 1993, has the same name as the volume under consideration but without the term ``with R''. The chapters of Volume 9, written by specialists in computer science and statistics, illustrate the trend in modern statistics of basic methodology supported by the state-of-the-art computational and graphical facilities, and their applications to diverse fields of human trails. Volume 9 contains the following 7 parts: Computing -- an overview, Mathematical programming and applications to statistics, Least squares estimation, General estimation problems, Artificial intelligence and statistics, Simulation and resampling and Statistical graphics. There are many books dealing with computational statistics, some of them containing topics more important than those described in this book, for example: [\textit{J. E. Gentle} (ed.) et al., Handbook of computational statistics. Concepts and methods. Berlin: Springer (2004; Zbl 1066.62001)]; \textit{J. E. Gentle}, Computational statistics. New York, NY: Springer (2009; Zbl 1179.62001); \textit{W. L. Martinez} and \textit{A. R. Martinez}, Computational statistics handbook with MATLAB. 3rd edition. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press (2015; Zbl 1343.62001)] and [Computational statistics. An introduction to R. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press (2009; Zbl 1160.62001)] by \textit{G. Sawitzki}. There is also the COMPSTAT series which is published by the Springer company. COMPSTAT symposia have been held regularly since 1974 when they started in Vienna. This tradition has made COMPSTAT a major forum for the interplay of statistics and computer sciences with contributions from many well-known scientists all over the world. The scientific program of COMPSTAT covers all aspects of this interplay, from user-experiences and evaluation of software through the development and implementation of new statistical ideas. All papers presented belong to one of the three following categories: statistical methods (preferably new ones) that require a substantial use of computing; computer environments, tools and software useful in statistics; applications of computational statistics in areas of substantial interest (environment, health, industry, biometrics, etc.). Proceedings in computational statistics is the the name of the series of books that contain papers presented in COMPSTAT symposia; one book for each year since 1974. The formula of the book under review is really excellent and each chapter is written by a known expert in the assigned topic. Such a choice of the editors makes the book readable to many potential users, both pure methodologists, applied statisticians and computer programmers. In this book, the R environment is used. R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. During the last decade, the animation coming from both academia and other life activities has lifted the R programming language to become the single most important tool for computational statistics, visualization and data science. Worldwide, millions of statisticians and data scientists use R to solve their most challenging problems in fields ranging from computational biology to quantitative marketing. R has become the most popular language for data science and an essential tool for finance and analytics-driven companies such as Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The book contains 10 chapters: in the first one, Chaitra H. Nagaraja presents an Introduction to R while in Chapter 2, Deepayan Sarkar focuses on R graphics (traditional, grid, lattice and ggplot). Chapter 3, which is authored by Palash Mallick and M. B. Rao, contains graphics miscellanea (scatter, time series, pie, box plots, curves and some other plots). Matrix algebra topics in statistics and economics using R is the subject of Chapter 4. This chapter is authored by Hrishikesh Vinod. In Chapters 5 and 6, M. B. Rao and Subramanyam Kasala present sample size calculations with R with levels I and II respectively. Ravi Varadhan in Chapter 7 introduces binomial regression while in Chapter 8, Derek Young focuses on tolerance limits with R. Modeling the probability of second cancer in controlled clinical trials is the subject of Chapter 9 which is authored by Kao-Tai Tsai and Karl E. Peace. M. B. Rao in Chapter 10 presents Bayesian networks and R (model selection, network model fitting and learning algorithm). Finally, I can say that this work is a valuable guide to computer scientists, statistical consultants, computer programmers and research workers in all fields involved in data analysis.