Abstract
This is a survey article concerning recent advances in certain areas of statistical theory, written for a mathematical audience with no background in statistics. The topics are chosen to illustrate a special point: how the advent of the high-speed computer has affected the development of statistical theory. The topics discussed include nonparametric methods, the jackknife, the bootstrap, cross-validation, error-rate estimation in discriminant analysis, robust estimation, the influence function, censored data, the EM algorithm, and Cox’s likelihood function. The exposition is mainly by example, with only a little offered in the way of theoretical development.
Keywords
Jackknife resamplingExposition (narrative)Nonparametric statisticsStatistical theoryStatisticsComputer scienceMathematical statisticsComputational statisticsDiscriminant function analysisFunction (biology)Likelihood functionEstimationStatistical thinkingEconometricsMathematicsEstimation theoryEngineering
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Publication Info
- Year
- 1979
- Type
- article
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 460-480
- Citations
- 858
- Access
- Closed
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Cite This
Bradley Efron
(1979).
Computers and the Theory of Statistics: Thinking the Unthinkable.
SIAM Review
, 21
(4)
, 460-480.
https://doi.org/10.1137/1021092
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1137/1021092