Whether it's the possibility of hearing the voices of ancient peoples or the puzzle solver's taste for the challenges posed by breaking codes, undeciphered scripts have long tantalized the public. Here, Andrew Robinson investigates the most famous examples, beginning with the stories of three great decipherments: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Maya glyphs, and the Minoan Linear B clay tablets.

He then tackles the important scripts that have yet to be cracked. Perhaps the greatest challenge is the Indus script, the onl writing of the four "first" civilizations that cannot be read and a...

Methods of Statistical Model Estimation examines the most important and popular methods used to estimate parameters for statistical models and provide informative model summary statistics. Designed for R users, the book is also ideal for anyone wanting to better understand the algorithms used for statistical model fitting.

The text presents algorithms for the estimation of a variety of regression procedures using maximum likelihood estimation, iteratively reweighted least squares regression, the EM algorithm, and MCMC sampling. Fully developed, working R code is...