Editorial introduction

Abstract

One year ago, in July 2017, 173 statisticians from all around the world gathered in Groningen, (The Netherlands) for a whole week to celebrate the 32nd International Workshop on Statistical Modelling (IWSM) 2017. The scientific program of IWSM 2017 comprised a one-day short course on Statistical Models for Social Network Dynamics, five invited keynote talks, 57 contributed talks, and 51 poster contributions. As usual for the IWSM workshop series, nearly all topical fields of Statistical Modelling were covered, and the peer-reviewed contributions were of high scientific quality. Fortunately, Marijtje van Duijn from the editorial board of Statistica Neerlandica had a great idea and suggested to launch a Statistica Neerlandica special issue on Statistical Modelling, featuring selected IWSM 2017 contributions. In my role as chair of the IWSM, I liked this idea to bundle some of the most interesting contributions in a special issue, and fortunately, the whole editorial board of Statistica Neerlandica supported Marijtje's idea as well. During last year's IWSM workshop, we selected the most appropriate contributions and invited the presenters to submit scientific papers on their works. To ensure the highest scientific quality, all submitted papers underwent a strict peer review process, and only the finally accepted papers have been published in this special issue. This is the special issue that so many statistical modellers have been waiting for: It consists of 11 articles with an average length of exactly 20 pages (standard deviation: 6.47), and I am convinced that the papers are representative of typical IWSM contributions. Moreover, I hope that the reader will enjoy reading the 11 articles as much as I enjoyed editing them. I thank the Statistical Modelling Society (Amsterdam) for giving me the opportunity to host the IWSM in Groningen in 2017. My thanks also go to the editorial board of Statistica Neerlandica for supporting the idea to launch a special issue on Statistical Modelling and for making me the responsible guest editor of this special issue. I also would like to thank all the members of the scientific committee and the local organizing committee for the support before and at the IWSM 2017. Special thanks go to the sponsors of IWSM 2017, especially to the “Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen” (KNAW), the “Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research” (NWO), the Dutch “Stochastics - Theoretical and Applied Research” (STAR) cluster, R studio, the province and city of Groningen, C. R. Rao Stichting, and the Toyota Motor Corporation. Finally yet importantly, I would like to thank all the authors who contributed to this special issue. On a personal note, I would like to add that I am very happy that the contributing authors, the editorial board of Statistica Neerlandica, and the editors of Wiley worked so hard and efficiently, so that I can keep my promise, namely that the special issue will have been published in July 2018. This paper is in pleasant anticipation of the IWSM 2018, which will shortly take place in Bristol, England (15–20 July 2018).