On May 27-31, 1985, a series of symposia was held at The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, to celebrate the 70th birthday of Pro­ fessor V. M. Joshi. These symposia were chosen to reflect Professor Joshi's research interests as well as areas of expertise in statistical science among faculty in the Departments of Statistical and Actuarial Sciences, Economics, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Philosophy. From these symposia, the six volumes which comprise the "Joshi Festschrift" have arisen. The 117 articles in this work reflect the broad interests and high quality of research of those who attended our conference. We would like to thank alI of the contributors for their superb cooperation in helping us to complete this project. Our deepest gratitude must go to the three people who have spent so much of their time in the past year typing these volumes: Jackie BeU, Lise Constant, and Sandy Tamowski. This work has been printed from "camera ready" copy produced by our Vax 785 computer and QMS Lasergraphix printers, using the text processing software TEX. At the initiation of this project, we were neophytes in the use of this system. Thank you, J ackie, Lise, and Sandy, for having the persistence and dedication needed to complete this undertaking.