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Applied Functional Data Analysis:
Methods and Case Studies
James O. Ramsay and Bernard W. Silverman
Preface
Almost as soon as we pleted our previous book Functional Data
Analysis in 1997, it became clear that potential interest in the field was
far wider than the audience for the thematic presentation we had given
there. At the same time, both of us rapidly became involved in relevant
new research involving many colleagues in fields outside statistics.
This book treats the field in a different way, by considering case stud-
ies arising from our own collaborative research to illustrate how functional
data analysis ideas work out in practice in a diverse range of subject areas.
These include criminology, economics, archaeology, rheumatology, psychol-
ogy, neurophysiology, auxology (the study of human growth), meteorology,
biomechanics, and education—and also a study of a juggling statistician.
Obviously such an approach will not cover the field exhaustively, and
in any case functional data analysis is not a hard-edged closed system of
thought. Nevertheless we have tried to give a flavor of the range of method-
ology we ourselves have considered. We hope that our personal experience,
including the fun we had working on these projects, will inspire others to
extend “functional” thinking to many other statistical contexts. Of course,
many of our case studies required development of existing methodology, and
readers should gain the ability to adapt methods to their own problems too.
No previous knowledge of functional data analysis is needed to read this
book, and although plements our previous book in some ways, neither
is a prerequisite for the other. We hope it will be of interest, and accessi-
ble, both to statisticians and to those working in other fields. Similarly, it
should appeal both to established researchers and to ing to
the subject for the first time.
vi Preface
Functional data analysis is very m