Computers and the Theory of Statistics: Thinking the Unthinkable

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.