Table of Contents

Preface; 1. Fundamental approximations; 2. Properties and derivatives; 3. Multivariate densities; 4. Conditional densities and distribution functions; 5. Exponential families and tilted distributions; 6. Further exponential family examples and theory; 7. Probability computation with p*; 8. Probabilities with r*-type approximations; 9. Nuisance parameters; 10. Sequential saddlepoint applications; 11. Applications to multivariate testing; 12. Ratios and roots of estimating equations; 13. First passage and time to event distributions; 14. Bootstrapping in the transform domain; 15. Bayesian applications; 16. Non-normal bases; References; Index.

Promotional Information

This book explains how approximate probability calculations make complex models tractable, with clear, simple explanations and real data examples.

About the Author

Ronald W. Butler is Professor of Statistics at Colorado State University. His statistical work on prediction, likelihood methods, and saddlepoint methods is widely known. His more recent work concerns the study of complex stochastic systems, reliability, and survival analysis, with applications to electrical engineering and medical statistics. In applied mathematics, he has made important contributions to the approximation of hypergeometric functions with matrix and vector arguments.

Reviews

'The prose is clear, conversational, and occasionally enlivened with wry humour. The overall impression is of great readability. The author has set out to make saddlepoint approximations more accessible to the reader, aiming to simplify and clarify the sometimes turgid literature, and has succeeded admirably.' Journal of Applied Statistics