The present volume is a collective monograph devoted to applications of
the optimal design theory in optimization and statistics. The chapters
re?ect the topics discussed at the workshop "W-Optimum Design and
Related Statistical Issues" that took place in Juan-les-Pins, France, in
May 2005. The title of the workshop was chosen as a light-hearted
celebration of the work of Henry Wynn. It was supported by the
Laboratoire I3S (CNRS/Universit´ e de Nice, Sophia Antipolis), to which
Henry is a frequent visitor. The topics covered partly re?ect the wide
spectrum of Henry's research - terests. Algorithms for constructing
optimal designs are discussed in Chap. 1, where Henry's contribution to
the ?eld is acknowledged. Steepest-ascent - gorithms used to construct
optimal designs are very much related to general
gradientalgorithmsforconvexoptimization. Inthelasttenyears, asigni?cant
part of Henry's research was devoted to the study of the asymptotic
prop- ties of such algorithms. This topic is covered by Chaps. 2 and 3.
The work by Alessandra Giovagnoli concentrates on the use of
majorization and stoch- tic ordering, and Chap. 4 is a hopeful renewal
of their collaboration. One of Henry's major recent interests is what is
now called algebraic statistics, the application of computational
commutative algebra to statistics, and he was partly responsible for
introducing the experimental design sub-area, reviewed in Chap. 5. One
other sub-area is the application to Bayesian networks and Chap. 6
covers this, with Chap. 7 being strongly related.
