This book covers recent advances for quantitative researchers with practical examples from
social sciences. The twelve chapters written by distinguished authors cover a wide range of
issues--all providing practical tools using the free R software. McCullough: R can be used for
reliable statistical computing whereas most statistical and econometric software cannot. This
is illustrated by the effect of abortion on crime. Koenker: Additive models provide a clever
compromise between parametric and non-parametric components illustrated by risk factors for
Indian malnutrition. Gelman: R graphics in the context of voter participation in US elections.
Vinod: New solutions to the old problem of efficient estimation despite autocorrelation and
heteroscedasticity among regression errors are proposed and illustrated by the Phillips curve
tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. Markus and Gu: New R tools for exploratory data
analysis including bubble plots. Vinod Hsu and Tian: New R tools for portfolio selection
borrowed from computer scientists and data-mining experts relevant to anyone with an
investment portfolio. Foster and Kecojevic: Extends the usual analysis of covariance (ANCOVA)
illustrated by growth charts for Saudi children. Imai Keele Tingley and Yamamoto: New R
tools for solving the age-old scientific problem of assessing the direction and strength of
causation. Their job search illustration is of interest during current times of high
unemployment. Haupt Schnurbus and Tschernig: Consider the choice of functional form for an
unknown potentially nonlinear relationship explaining a set of new R tools for model
visualization and validation. Rindskopf: R methods to fit a multinomial based multivariate
analysis of variance (ANOVA) with examples from psychology sociology political science and
medicine. Neath: R tools for Bayesian posterior distributions to study increased disease risk
in proximity to a hazardous waste site. Numatsi and Rengifo: Explain persistent discrete jumps
in financial series subject to misspecification.
