This book grew out of a desire on the part of both authors to formally record in one volume
some of their research on ranking methods. My own interest was sparked by a problem
emanating from the School of Nursing at the University of Ottawa. It was desired to test if
patients who were mobile differed from those who were not with respect to how they ranked
certain sets of situations. The early research dealing with the one sample problem was
conducted at the Technion where I spent a sabbatical and worked together with my friends …

Phylogenetics is involved with the estimation of evolutionary relationships among biological
organisms, typically using molecular sequence data from living organisms, but also
sometimes morphological characteristics from both living organisms and fossils. In many
situations, the primary biological questions of interest are encapsulated in the estimation of a
tree (part of a great Tree of Life) as a graphical structure that represents the past
evolutionary history of speciation and descent of a group of organisms. Sometimes the …