The initial meetings of the Royal Statistical Society were held in the home of one of its founders, Charles Babbage. With this kind of background it is not surprising that the Society has been among the leaders in the publication of statistical algorithms since 1969 with one of its journals, Applied Statistics. This book contains descriptions of 34 of these algorithms. (Actually of 33, since one of the 34 algorithms in the book is from the Collected Algorithms of the ACM.) The 34 were selected by a panel of 29 interested people from among all the algorithms published in Applied Statistics.

The book also contains a chapter with some good suggestions on how algorithms of this kind should be written and documented, as well as three useful appendices. One of these appendices lists all 207 algorithms that had been published in Applied Statistics through 1984.

The algorithms in this book are not those that would be used to conduct statistical analyses, but rather are those that would be used in developing statistical methodology. In view of this, the book is recommended as a useful and well-written reference for persons interested in the development of statistical methods. Not only does the book contain the most useful and important algorithms from Applied Statistics in one place, but it also updates, corrects, and fully documents these algorithms. Moreover, it should be noted that the algorithms in the book are all available in machine-readable form.