We are very grateful to John Kent and Fred Bookstein for their insightful comments on a late draft of the book. We are also grateful to colleagues for many useful discussions and for sending preprints: Yali Amit, Bidyut Chaudhuri, Colin Goodall, Tim Hainsworth, Val Johnson, David Johnson, Peter Jupp, David Kendall, Wilfrid Kendall, Huiling Le, Paul O’Higgins, Dietrich Stoyan, Charles Taylor and Alistair Walder.

Various aspects of our work in shape analysis were developed with research fellows and students at Leeds. In particular we are grateful for the help of current and former Postdoctoral Research Fellows Kevin de Souza, Merrilee Hurn, Delman Lee, Richard Morris, Wei Qian, Sophia Rabe-Hesketh, Druti Shah, Lisa Walder, Janet West and Postgraduate Students Cath Anderson, Mohammad Faghihi, Bree James, Jayne Kirkbride, John Little, Ian Moreton, Mark Scarr, Catherine Thomson and Gary Walker.

Comments from those attending the Shape Analysis course given by ILD at the University of Chicago were very valuable (Xiao-Li Meng, Chih-Rung Chen, Ernesto Fontenla and Scott Hadley). The shape workshop at Duke University in March 1997, organized by Val Johnson, was also very helpful.

The use of computer and other facilities at the University of Leeds and the University of Chicago is gratefully acknowledged.

We are very grateful to the following for providing and helping with the data: Cath Anderson, Fred Bookstein, Chris Glasbey, Graham Horgan, Nina Jablonski, David Johnson, John Marchant, Terry McAndrew, Paul O’Higgins, and Robin Tillett.

The authors would like to thank their wives Maria Dryden and Pavan Mardia for their support and encouragement.

Ian Dryden and Kanti Mardia
Leeds, December 1997