Modern Applied Statistics With S-PLUS (3rd ed.), by W. N. Venables and B. D. Ripley, New York: Springer-Verlag. 1999, ISBN 0-387-98825-4, xi + 501 pp., $64.95.

This is the triennial third edition (3E) of a book that was originally published in 1994 and reviewed for Technometrics by James (1996). The reviewer noted, "The task the authors have undertaken is challenging: getting new S/S-PLUS users to quickly learn the fundamentals of the language, and to present a modem approach to data analysis through numerous examples from many areas of statistics. They succeed in this at the expense of exploratory data analysis during model building" (p. 77). The reviewer provided an extensive summary of the content. In his summary, he stated, "Since the book covers many statistical methods, it sacrifices some depth for breadth. Overall, many Technometrics readers may find this book useful, even though it does not cover the S-Plus material on statistical process control" (p. 78). Judging by the topics for the papers in Technometrics, that is not much of a deficiency.

The content generally is little changed from previous editions. There has been some rearranging. The material that previously constituted a stand-alone chapter on robust statistics was rolled into other chapters, primarily the chapter on linear models. Likewise the chapter on classification was rolled into the chapter on multivariate analysis. Coupled with the moving of the chapter on tree-based methods forward in the book, this shows that the authors obviously are cognizant of the effect of the interest in data mining that exists outside of the statistical community. The material on the S language has been condensed from that found in other books, such as the one by Krause and Olson (2000). reported immediately preceding these pages. Despite the previous reviewer's discussions about the "breadth" of the book, I would describe the choice of topics as selective. The authors wrote about what interested them, such as spatial statistics (e.g., Ripley 1988) or pattern recognition (e.g., Ripley 1996).

Topical and subject-area books are being published around S-PLUS, so reviewers who need additional breadth or depth are referred to these recent books. Examples include Millard and Neerchal (2001) and Pinheiro and Bates (2000) (reported by Ziegel 2001).

REFERENCES

James, D. (1996). Review of Modern Applied Statistics With S-PLUS, by W. Venables and B. Ripley, Technometrics, 38, 77-78.

Krause. A., and Olson, M. (2000), The Basics of S and S-PLUS (2nd ed.) New York: Springer-Verlag.

Millard, S., and Neerchal, N. (2001), Environmental Statistics With S-PLUS, Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Pinheiro, J., and Bates, D. (2000), Mixed-Effects Models in S and S-PLUS, New York: Springer-Verlag.

Ripley, B. (1988). Statistical Inference for Spatial Processes, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

----- (1996), Pattern Recognition and Neural Networks, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Ziegel, E. (2001), Editor's Report on Mixed Effects Models in S and S-PLUS, by J. Pinheiro and D. Bates, Technometrics, 43, 113.