Biostat at 25. Invited essays in theoretical, biomedical and social statistics

This collection of essays marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the foundation of the Scuola di Alta Formazione Statistica (International Advanced School on Statistics, aka School of Statistical Inference in Biology and Human Sciences). In sum, in 25 years of activity we have enjoyed the participation of over 700 students, the majority of which graduate students and young PhDs in biomedical sciences (most of them are today esteemed researchers in their fields) and a number of international lecturers. We wish we could list all their names, and we include them all in a warm “thank you” for contributing with their interest, experience, and friendly collegiality. About the content of this volume, it suffices to say that the contributions that follow are quite heterogeneous. The range of empirical problems they address and the varied solutions adopted to solve them, in both frequentist and Bayesian inference, simply reflect the attitude that the School had since the beginning: to be exhaustive by touching upon as many examples as possible. As for the projects that are being planned for the future, we’d rather not say, as projects “are stuff as dreams are made on”.  The Editors