This book brings together selected peer-reviewed contributions from various research fields in statistics, and highlights the diverse approaches and analyses related to real-life phenomena. Major topics covered in this volume include, but are not limited to, bayesian inference, likelihood approach, pseudo-likelihoods, regression, time series, and data analysis as well as applications in the life and social sciences.The software packages used in the papers are made available by the authors.This book is a result of the 47th Scientific Meeting of the Italian Statistical Society, held at the University of Cagliari, Italy, in 2014.

The three editors are researchers well known to national and international statistical community. In addition, each of them has a large scientific production and the results of their research are published in numerous journals well classified.