This book is based on notes from a series of lectures given for a few years at
the Institut Universitaire de Technologie Grenoble 2 in the Department of Statistics
and Business Intelligence (STID, Statistique et informatique d′ecisionnelle). It has
therefore been “digested” first, in a very imperfect form, by the students of this
department, whom we thank here. Had they not shown so much interest, this book
would probably never have existed. We also thank our colleague and friend Michel
Lejeune, who managed to talk to us about writing a manuscript and submitting it
to Springer. It is worth pointing out the role of chance, which made the paths of
the three authors cross in the same place for a few years. The human and scientific
experience of this encounter was very enriching, and each author provided complementary
skills which made it possible to overcome the tremendous amount of work
necessary for this book. Finally, we wish to warmly thank our colleague and friend
Matthieu Dubois, who is a researcher in experimental psychology and addicted to
R and to Macintosh and who was the first to read the French version of the book in
its almost finalized version and gave us many ideas for improvement.