Applied functional data analysis. Methods and case studies. (English) Zbl 1011.62002

Ramsay, J. O.; Silverman, B. W.

Springer Series in Statistics. New York, NY: Springer. x, 190 p. (2002).

This book deals with functional data analysis from a very applied point of view. In fact, it only considers case studies arising from collaborative research of the authors with a minimum of prerequisites. The contents is organized by 12 chapters. After the introduction, examples from criminology, economics, archaeology, rheumatology, psychology, neurophysiology, auxology (the study of human growth), meteorology, biomechanics, education and a study of a juggling statistician together with lots of figures illustrate what is meant by “applied functional data analysis”.
Roughly speaking, the reader comes to the conclusion that functional data come in form of curves or functions rather than just numbers or vectors of numbers which are commonly met in applied statistics. This is what juggling, old bones, criminal careers and human growth patterns, etc., have in common. The mentioned case studies are accessible to workers in a wide range of disciplines. Moreover, there is an associated web site with MATLAB and S-PLUS implementations of the methods discussed which is accessible from the webpage http://www.springer-ny.com and provides annotated analyses of many of the data sets.
All in all, this book is not intended to be a research monograph and the presented mathematics is kept to a minimum. Therefore, the nonmathematically oriented audience will enjoy reading through it, whereas a mathematician will probably have some reservations.

Reviewer: Henri Schurz (Carbondale)

MSC:

62-01	Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to statistics
62Pxx	Applications of statistics
62-07	Data analysis (statistics) (MSC2010)

Keywords:

data analysis; applied functional data analysis

Software:

fda (R); S-PLUS; Matlab; S+ FDA