CSSS professor Dr. Adrian Raftery book published: Model-Based Clustering, Classification, and Density Estimation Using mclust in R
SEATLLE - Dr. Adrian Raftery, founding director and faculty affiliate of the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences at UW, has with three colleagues published a book on model-based clustering using the programming language R.
The book, titled "Model-Based Clustering, Classification, and Density Estimation Using mclust in R," was published by Chapman & Hall/CRC Press. It was written to be accessible to quantitatively trained students and researchers with a basic understanding of statistical methods, including inference and computing. In addition to serving as a reference manual for the R package mclust, the book will be particularly useful to those wishing to employ these model-based techniques in research or applications in statistics, data science, clinical research, social science, and many other disciplines.
Key features of the book include an introduction to the model-based approach and the mclust R package; a detailed description of mclust and the underlying modeling strategies; and an extensive set of examples, color plots, and figures along with the R code for reproducing them. The book is supported by a companion website, including the R code to reproduce the examples and figures presented in the book, errata, and other supplementary material.
The book has been warmly received by colleagues around the world. Duke University professor David Banks noted that cluster analysis has been underserved in statistical texts and stated that “this magisterial book corrects that imbalance and does so comprehensively." Christian Hennig of the University of Bologna called the book a “clear, comprehensive, well-illustrated hands-on introduction,” and Claire Gormley of University College Dublin called it “essential reading for any practitioner of model-based clustering, classification or density estimation.”
Dr. Raftery was one of the founding researchers in model-based clustering, having published in the area since 1984. He is also the Boeing International Professor of Statistics and Sociology at UW, and Adjunct Professor of Atmospheric Sciences. He serves as affiliate faculty of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology as well as CSSS. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and was identified by Thomson-Reuter as the most cited researcher in mathematics in the world for the decade 1995–-2005. He served as Editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association (JASA). His coauthors are Luca Scrucca, Chris Fraley, and T. Brendan Murphy.
