This COMPSTAT 2002 book contains the Keynote, Invited, and Full Contributed papers presented in Berlin, August 2002. A companion volume including Short Communications and Posters is published on CD. The COMPSTAT 2002 is the 15th conference in a serie of biannual conferences with the objective to present the latest developments in Computational Statistics and is taking place from August 24th to August 28th, 2002. Previous COMPSTATs were in Vienna (1974), Berlin (1976), Leiden (1978), Edinburgh (1980), Toulouse (1982), Pra~ue (1984), Rome (1986), Copenhagen (1988), Dubrovnik (1990), Neuchatel (1992), Vienna (1994), Barcelona (1996), Bris tol (1998) and Utrecht (2000). COMPSTAT 2002 is organised by CASE, Center of Applied Statistics and Eco nomics at Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin in cooperation with F''reie Universitat Berlin and University of Potsdam. The topics of COMPSTAT include methodological applications, innovative soft ware and mathematical developments, especially in the following fields: statistical risk management, multivariate and robust analysis, Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods, statistics of E-commerce, new strategies in teaching (Multimedia, In ternet), computerbased sampling/questionnaires, analysis of large databases (with emphasis on computing in memory), graphical tools for data analysis, classification and clustering, new statistical software and historical development of software.
