Statistical Science: From Theory to Applied Research I
Description
This first of four volumes on Statistical Science: From Theory to Applied Research presents peer-reviewed short papers on theoretical and applied statistics presented at the Joint Meeting SIS-FENStatS 2026, held in Rome, Italy, on June 22-25, 2026. The meeting brought together the 53rd Scientific Meeting of the Italian Statistical Society (SIS 2026) and the 1st Scientific Meeting of the European Statistical Societies (FENStatS 2026) promoted by the Federation of European National Statistical Societies. This volume features invited contributions presented in the Plenary, Specialized, FENStatS, and Solicited Sessions.
The contributions present modern methodological developments and innovative applications in a wide variety of fields and address current challenges in statistical science. The topics covered include, but are not limited to, high-dimensional and multivariate statistics, functional data analysis and complex data structures, Bayesian statistics, time series analysis, dependence and extreme values, statistical learning, machine learning and AI, network science, analysis of directional and compositional data, spatial, spatio-temporal and environmental statistics, biostatistics and the analysis of medical data, social statistics, demography, economic statistics, as well as survey statistics, official statistics and public policy. Given this variety, the book also demonstrates the importance of statistical science and the responsible use of quantitative methods in addressing societal and environmental challenges related to sustainable development.
The Joint Meeting SIS-FENStatS 2026 was the first event of its kind ever organized at the European level. It provided an important forum for dialogue, exchange and collaboration among national and international contributors from academia, national and international institutions, and industry, working across statistics, demography, and applied statistical fields.
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Persons
Francesca Martella is an Associate Professor at the Department of Statistical Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
Serena Arima is an Associate Professor at the Department of Human and Social Sciences, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy.
Maria Francesca Marino is an Associate Professor at the Department of Statistics, Computer Science, Applications "G. Parenti", University of Florence, Italy.
Cristina Mollica is an Associate Professor at the Department of Statistical Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
Content
Data Science for a Better World: Building a Safer Digital Environment.- Emerging Challenges at the Tripartite Interface of Computation, Economics, and Inference.- Valid inference from new data sources: what can we learn from the experience of handling complex sampling designs?.- Uncertainty and Fertility.- Causal Machine Learning for Medical Texts under Nonlinear Confounding.- Enriching Egocentric Co-authorship Networks with Survey Data: A Weighted Network Analysis of Academic Collaboration.- Unsupervised detection of undeclared work: a two-stage framework integrating Isolation Forests and Benford Law.- Roles of Digital Trace Data in Survey Research.- Towards Trustworthy AI in Official Statistics: Methodological Challenges and Research Perspectives from Istat.- A Bayesian Semi-Supervised IRT Approach for Extracting Latent Traits from Semantic Network.- Inference with Aggregated Mobile Network Operator Data via Quasi-Randomization Approach: some results.- Tracking Urbanisation Gradient of NEET: Trends and Changing Rural-Urban Gaps.- Two Topics in Statistical Matching.- Notched Violin Plots for Circular Data.- A distributional-dissimilarity framework for iterative outlier identification and characterization in Linear Cluster-Weighted Models.- Reflections on (Auto-)E&I in Official Statistics.- Recent developments in Ecological Inference in studies of voting behaviour- Understanding correlation in dependent nonparametric models.- Skill Intensity and Regional Skill Change: Evidence from Online Job Advertisements for ICT Occupations.- The network cluster-weighted model for attributed social networks.- Modelling Task Scheduling Behaviours using Latent Markov Models for Ranking Data.- Enhancing optimal symmetry tests on the torus: Additional simulation studies.- Generalising the Cressie-Read family of divergence statistics: Weighted three-way log-ratio analysis with an application to medical data.- Physics-informed separable smoothing with time-parametrized operators.- Quantile-based joint modeling of longitudinal and survival data via a mixture of AR(1) latent processes.- Random Forests for Time Series.- Common subspaces in compositional data with structural zeros.- A Multi-level Clustering method for complex data.- Mixtures of stochastic frontiers with random covariates.- Demographic and Social Patterns of Online Dating in Italy.- Mixed Membership Models for Multilevel Functional Data.- Intrinsic CoDa regression: Simulation and comparison to other approaches.- Silver Tech, Slow Uptake:.- Digital Innovation and the Care Gap in Ageing Italy.- A network-based analysis of gender inequality in academic career persistence.- The Shifting Nature of Statistics in the Age of Algorithms.- Trend Analysis for the Asymmetry of Bilateral Shapes.- A Functional Regression Approach for Assessing the Impact of Temperature Profiles on Crop Yield.- Joint Modeling of Recurrent Hospitalizations and Death in COPD Patients Using a Poisson-Renewal Framework.- "Official Statistics, AI, and Computational.- Thinking in Statistical Education".- A Constrained Mechanism for Adjusting Misclassified Proxy Variables.- Dynamic Data-Driven Regularization and Bias Adjustment of Realized Global Minimum Variance Portfolio Weights.- Artificial Intelligence and Inequalities: Risks and Opportunities for Social Statistics.- Statistical Literacy for Non-Statisticians: Teaching Experience from an Economics Faculty.- Representation learning in genomics and medical statistics.- Analysis of Information Composition under the Normality Assumption.- Failure Prediction Models in Steel Production: A Comparative Analysis.- Functional Clustering via Independent Components.- New tools for exploratory functional data analysis of neuroimaging data.- A brief overview of parametric approaches to antibody data analysis.- Statistical games: activities to promote statistical literacy in early childhood.- Bayesian ordinal probit inference with skew-symmetric EP and hyperparameter marginalization.- Bayesian Modeling of Complex Size-and-Shape Variation.- Beyond Static Multipliers: A SAM-to-CGE Framework to Capture Substitution Effects and Long-Run Dynamics in Italian Tourism.- Integrating External Information in Accounting-Based Early Warning Models.- Spatio-temporal intensity estimation for point processes on complicated domains.- Target Trial Emulation using Electronics Health Records: the experience of the Trieste Cardiovascular Observatory.- Semi-supervised Learning with Copulas.- Integrating Heterogeneous Biomarkers into Clinical Diagnosis: A Graph-Based Approach for Thyroid Lesions.- Satellite data for monitoring and official statistics.- A methodological frame for the re-use of MNO data in official statistics.- Dependence Modelling Approaches to Bitcoin Forecasting Using Social Media Data.- Hybrid spatial functional regression for seismic wave analysis.- Variable Importance and Model Explainability in Neural Networks: The Contribution of Generative Methods.- Bayesian Multivariate Fay-Herriot Model for Compositional Data.- Assessing the Impact of Having Children with Disability on Parents' Health and Life Outcomes.- Small area estimation for social phenomena using multidimensional latent trait models.- The Effect of Secondary School Guidance on University Dropout: Evidence from the University of Padova.- Improving microdata quality: an application of machine learning techniques.- Productivity Gains in European Value Chains: Generation, Transmission and Distribution.- Kernels in Multi-Fidelity Gaussian Processes for Translational Modelling.- Hierarchical Gaussian Process Decomposition for Sparse Irregular Longitudinal Data.- Alternative approaches for addressing selection bias in non-probability samples.- Environmental Footprint of Household Consumption in Italy: A Supply-Use Table approach of assessment.- Higher Education, Higher Social and Emotional Skills? An Investigation of Tertiary Education Effect from Second Cycle PIAAC Data.- Target Trial Emulation: An Overview for Causal Inference from Observational Data.- Demystifying the balancing of quarterly accounts: insights from the recent Italian experiments.- Improving Inequality Estimation in Survey-to-Survey Imputation using GAMLSS.- Robust Estimation for Paired Count Data.- Multidimensional Inequality Indices: some Issues on Decomposition and Invariance.- Assessment of Water Quality Using Varying Coefficient Models on Fluvial Networks.- Uncovering longitudinal patients' profiles in clinical studies: a practical comparative analysis of statistical methods.- Modelling sparse and irregular longitudinal biomarker data with multi-output Gaussian processes.- Cell-type co-localization as a biomarker: a point-process framework for diagnostic imaging.- A Weighted Quantile Sum (WQS) approach for omics data.- Lives on the Margins: An Analysis of Asylum Mortality in Italy at the Turn of the 20th Century.- Refining Maritime Transport Statistics through AIS Data Analysis.- Global Discourses on Well-Being and Links to Environmental Dimensions: A Structural Topic Model of UN Member State Well-Being Documents.- "Does Age Favor Men or Women?" Life-course insights into gender gaps in well-being across OECD countries.- Spatial Modelling of Urban Air Pollutants using Copulas.- Online Approximate Bayesian Inference for Discrete-Time Markov Models.- Meta-analysis of observational studies: a new balancing procedure.