Summary

Interest in statistical methodology is increasing so rapidly in the astronomical community that accessible introductory material in this area is long overdue. This book fills the gap by providing a presentation of the most useful techniques in multivariate statistics. A wide-ranging annotated set of general and astronomical bibliographic references follows each chapter, providing valuable entry-points for research workers in all astronomical sub-disciplines. Although the applications considered focus on astronomy, the algorithms used can be applied to similar problems in other branches of science. Fortran programs are provided for many of the methods described.