In a peaks over threshold analysis of a series of river flows, a sufficiently high threshold is used to extract the peaks of independent flood events. This paper reviews existing, and proposes new, statistical models for both the annual counts of such events and the process of event peak times....

In extending survival models to include frailty effects, the relative merits of parametric and nonparametric formulations are unclear. The epidemiological emphasis (Clayton, Statist. in Med. 7 (1988) 819–841) has been upon nonparametric specification of conditional effects while, within...

The generalized estimating equation (GEE) approach to the analysis of longitudinal data has many attractive robustness properties and can provide a 'population average' characterization of interest, for example, to clinicians who have to treat patients on the basis of their observed...

A common problem in environmental epidemiology is the estimation and mapping of spatial variation in disease risk. In this paper we analyse data from the Walsall District Health Authority, UK, concerning the spatial distributions of cancer cases compared with controls sampled from the population...

Because weather has the potential to confound or modify the pollution–mortality relationship, researchers have developed several approaches for controlling it in estimating the independent effect of air pollution on mortality. This report considers the consequences of using alternative...

Graphical models simplify the analysis of multivariate observations by summarizing conditional independences in the data. Variables are represented by nodes, and the absence of an edge between two nodes signifies their conditional independence. While graphical modelling has been used in several...

This paper brings together two topics in the estimation of time series forecasting models: the use of the multistep-ahead error sum of squares as a criterion to be minimized and frequency domain methods for carrying out this minimization. The methods are developed for the wide class of time...

Our case study focuses on Milan. Italian law specifies strict guidelines for the permissibility of high levels of a variety of air pollutants in cities. In Milan, a highly sophisticated network of recording stations has been constructed to monitor pollutant levels. The aim of this paper is to...

There has been considerable recent interest in understanding the way in which recombination rates vary over small physical distances, and the extent of recombination hotspots, in various genomes. Here we adapt, apply, and assess the power of recently developed coalescent-based approaches to...

Network models are widely used to represent relations between interacting units or actors. Network data often exhibit transitivity, meaning that two actors that have ties to a third actor are more likely to be tied than actors that do not, homophily by attributes of the actors or dyads, and...