Introduction Welcome to the Statistics in a Changing Society - 175 Years of Progress, the RSS 2009 International Conference in Edinburgh. This book includes abstracts of over 260 presentations being made during the conference, in this order: • Plenary speakers in order of presentation • Invited, contributed and special sessions in the same order as they appear in the programme • Poster presentations in alphabetical order by author surname. All posters will be on display at the reception at The Hub on Tuesday evening and then those presented by ‘career-young’ statisticians will be displayed in the refreshments and exhibition areas of the conference venue for the remainder of the week. Finally, please note that the Conference Programme Committee allocates contributed papers to topics in an effort to ensure (as far as is possible) the coherence of sessions, and this may not accord with the topic requested by the presenter. I hope you enjoy the conference Paul Gentry RSS theme manager for conferences and meetings Plenary speakers 1 PLENARY 1 OPENING PLENARY Sir David Cox Nuffield College, Oxford
[email protected] New Road, Oxford, OX1 1NF United Kingdom The Royal Statistical Society: past, present and future A broad view will be given of some of the strands of activity of the RSS. A few possible implications for the future will be outlined. David Cox read Mathematics at Cambridge and his first posts were in Dept of Mechanical and Structural Engineering, Royal Aircraft Establishment Farnborough and then at Wool Industries Research Association, Leeds. Subsequently he held positions at Cambridge, University of N Carolina, Birkbeck College and from 1966 to 1988 at Dept of Mathematics, Imperial College.