Simon N. Wood works as a Professor of Statistics at the University of Bath and currently holds an established research fellowship from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. He is author of the widely used R package mgcv for smooth statistical modelling and the book Generalized Additive Models: An Introduction with R, as well as a number of well-cited papers on associated statistical methods. Originally trained in physics, before a spell in theoretical ecology, he has twenty years' experience of teaching statistics at undergraduate and postgraduate level, including teaching the 'statistical computing' module of the UK Academy for PhD training in statistics, for several years.

• 1. Random variables; 2. R; 3. Statistical models and inference; 4. Theory of maximum likelihood estimation; 5. Numerical maximum likelihood estimation; 6. Bayesian computation; 7. Linear models.

'The author keeps this book concise by focusing entirely on topics that are most relevant for scientific modeling via maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference. This makes it an ideal text and handy reference for any math-literate scientist who wants to learn how to build sophisticated parametric models and fit them to data using modern computational approaches. I will be recommending this well-written book to my collaborators.' Murali Haran, Pennsylvania State University