This book is a guide to using S environments to perform statistical analyses and provides both an introduction to the use of S and a course in modern statistical methods.

This best-selling guide has been completely updated to present the newest features of S-PLUS 5.0, and includes the very latest computationally-intensive methods and techniques.

Hence our strategies have some affinity with the simulated annealing algorithm of combinatorial optimization. The methods work well and compare favourabily with other search strategies.