Observations in the form of point events occurring in a continuum, space
or time, arise in many fields of study. In writing this monograph on
statistical techniques for dealing with such data, we have three
objectives. First, we have tried to give a simple description, with
numerical examples, of the main methods that have been proposed. We hope
that by concentrating on the examples the applied statistician with a
limited inclination for theory will find something of practical value in
the monograph. Second, the monograph is intended as a survey,
necessarily incomplete, of some of the problems in theoretical
statistics that stem from this sort of data. A number of specialized
subjects have, however, been dealt with only briefly, the main emphasis
being placed on the problem of examining the structure of a series of
events. Finally, we hope that the monograph will be of use to teachers
and students of statistics, as illustrating applications of a range of
tech- niques in theoretical statistics. We are extremely grateful to the
International Business Machines Corporation for providing programming
assistance and a large amount of computer time. We wish to thank
particularly Mr A.