220
Hinkley DV, Reid N, Snell EJ eds 1991: Statistical
theory and modelling: in honour of Sir David Cox,
FRS. London: Chapman and Hall. 349 pp. £30.00.
ISBN 0 412 30590 9.
There can be few who justify a statistics book in
their honour so much as Sir David Cox. Indeed, I
am sure that the editors felt considerable pressure to
make sure that the book was a good one. Certainly,
the list of contributors is very strong and the fact
that it is made up entirely of his former colleagues
and PhD students serves to emphasize Sir David’s
central position.
The book is essentially a set of review chapters.
They cover areas in which Sir David himself made
a contribution, but although they refer to his work
as and when appropriate, the emphasis of these
reviews is on being concise and up-to-date rather
than on cataloguing his work. The standard of
writing is very high and evidence of the work of
the editors is clear from the books clear organiza-
tion and sensible cross-referencing. Almost without
exception each chapter stands out as being tightly
organized and a remarkably complete review from
introduction onto new and current research issues.
However, the breadth of Cox’s statistical interests
has resulted in an enormous range of ground to be
-
covered. The major problem that quickly emerges
from this book is that it is simply not long enough.
Although all concepts are introduced, unless one
already has some considerable familiarity with their
use, some chapters will present many readers with
difficulties. It is rather like symbolism in painting,
all there but unless you know the background its
significance is lost. This sense of coded messages is
reinforced by such things as the several references
to the ’weighing machine example’ that are never
enlarged upon. The book is intended to be suitable
for postgraduate reading and teaching. Effective
use of the book relies heavily on the suggestion
in the preface that students might follow-up the
references.
The book contains 12 chapters. The first two
chapters on statistical theory and applied statistics
both serve to introduce the book and reflect
Cox’s belief in the complementarity of theoretical
. work and applied problems. Hinkley and Reid’s
summary of statistical theory well illustrates the
previous paragraph - undeniably sound, though
I would prefer not to hear that ’conditioning on
approximate ancilliary statistics’ was an important
topic as early as page 23. Snell and Hinkley’s
chapter on applied statistics is much more straight-
forward, illustrating well the necessity for applied
statisticians to have a developed commonsense,
Unfortunately, the chapter conveys little of the
excitement and satisfaction that working alongside
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other scientists on real problems can bring.
The next seven chapters are more typical surveys
of specific areas. Firth’s chapter on generalized
linear models was particularly good, being acces-
sible and yet managing to cover the ground up
to questions of current research interest. So too
was the chapter on residuals and diagnostics
by Davison and Snell, though I would have
preferred a somewhat more critical appraisal of
the value of many plots. The chapters on life-table
(survival) analysis by Oakes, modelling stochastic
phenomena by Isham and time-series by Bloomfield
cover predictable ground and lay somewhat greater
emphasis on introductory concepts and methods
than on more recent research. Armitage’s chapter
on sequential methods has a somewhat more
historical flavour to it, but nonetheless covers
the ground to current clinical trial designs. Brevity
again means that much interesting background
relating to clinical and ethical issues has been
omitted. Atkinson, in his chapter on optimum
design, rightly argues that for some while this area
has not received the attention it warrants. Clearly
laid out this chapter remained a little dry.
The last three chapters cover rather more
advanced material and would justify very careful
reading. Between them, Barndorff-Nielsen on
likelihood theory, McCullagh on quasilikelihood
and estimating functions and Reid on approxima-
tions and saddlepoints, provide the concepts and
the tools for numerous future PhDs.
This is undoubtedly an impressive book. As a set
of reviews covering a wide area I will undoubtedly
use it as source of reference, and would happily
refer good medical statistics students to certain
of the more accessible chapters. For the more
applied reader, the more advanced chapters will
prove hard work. Finally, the book also contains
some further and fascinating pages; the list of Sir
David’s publications.
Reviewed by Andrew Pickles, MRC Child Psychiatry
Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK.
Chambers JM, Hastie TJ eds 1992: Statisti-
cal models in S. California: Wadsworth and
Brooks/Cole. ISBN 0 534 16765-9
In my more optimistic moments, I imagine myself
sitting opposite Sue Lawley, considering what
book, apart from the Bible and the Complete Works
of Shakespeare, I would take along with my eight
chosen records to the UK’s most well known desert

island. As with most castaways, pretention vies with
honesty, and I am caught between a slim, volume of
Vietnamese peasant poetry and ’Biggles Combs his
Hair’. But wait - suppose Sue would let me have
a Dell 450DE (solar powered of course) with the
latest version of S-Plus as my luxury item - now
the choice is simple; I would take Statistical models
in S, particularly if it could be bound together
with its companion volume, The new S language.
Such a combination should keep most applied
statisticians trapped on their own particular desert
islands, happy until rescue arrives.
’S’ is a programming environment for data analy-
sis and graphics. Developed at Bell Labs in the
late 1970s and early 1980s, it is now available to
run under DOS on a modern PC, as well as in its
original Unix version. The language is described in
detail in The new S language, which also contains
descriptions of several hundred S functions. Many
of these are statistical; for example, the usual
methods of exploring multivariate analysis such
as principal components and cluster analysis and
also more esoteric techniques like star plots and
Chernoff faces. But the main and the most impres-
sive feature of S, is its graphics capability, which
allows simple to extremely complex figures and
diagrams to be produced routinely.
With the publication of ’Statistical Models’ the
usefulness of S to the practising applied statistician
has increased considerably. The book begins with
three introductory chapters; the first of these
demonstrates some of the new S graphical
procedures for displaying data from designed
experiments, the second describes the rationale
behind statistical models, and the third examines
the way data is handled in S, in particular the
concept of the data frame. Chapters 4, 5 and
6, cover respectively, Linear models, Analysis
of variance and Generalized linear models. Each
chapter contains a useful introduction to the
area, a series of nontrivial examples, and a
more specific (and more advanced) section on
computing. (The formulae used to define models
in the S language follow generally the style intro-
duced by Wilkinson and Rogers, 1973. ) Additional
chapters are provided on more esoteric techniques
such as Generalized additive models, Local regres-
sion models and Tree based models. A 100 page
appendix contains descriptions of many of the S
functions used in the book.
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221
Both Statistical models and The new S language are
intimately related to the S software but neither can
be regarded as ’manuals’, user-friendly or other-
wise. They are both far more than that.
Although most of the examples used in Statistical
models are nonmedical, the medical statistician
should still find much of the material fascinating,
but only, of course, if he/she has access to the
associated package. Many happy hours could, for
example, be spent unravelling the mysteries of a
’coplot’ or interactively ’snipping’ tree structures,
or producing beautiful perspective plots of surfaces
fitted by local regression. More seriously, the ability
to produce a wide variety of ’residual’ plots for
all types of models, is exceptionally useful. But
remember, after using S, there may be no easy
way to return to the more mundane (but perhaps
more comprehensible) world of SAS, BMDP and
SPSS. Even GLIM and GENSTAT may lose much
of their appeal!
Statistical models in S contains much that is novel
and exciting and can be recommended, but only as
part of the complete ’desert island’ package, which
also contains The new S language, and a copy of the
software.
’Thanks Sue, I’ve enjoyed it.’
Reviewed by Brian Everitt, Institute of Psychiatry,
London, UK.
References
Becker RA, Chambers JM, Wilks AR. The new
S language. California: Wadsworth, Pacific Grove,
1988.
Wilkinson GN, Rogers CE. Symbolic description of
factorial models for analysis of variance. Applied
Statistics 1973; 22: 392-99.
Footnote
(It may be helpful for those readers outside the
UK toknow of the existence of ’Desert Island
Discs’, a radio programme in which ’personalities’
are invited to select eight gramophone records to
take with them to a desert island. The programme
is currently introduced by a Miss Sue Lawley.)