This IMA Volume in Mathematics and its Applications COMPUTING AND GRAPHICS IN STATISTICS is based on the proceedings of the last two weeks of the six week IMA 1989 summer program "Robustness, Diagnostics, Computing and Graphics in Statistics". An important objective of the organizers was to draw a broad set of statisticians working in statistical computation into collaboration on the challenging problems in this rapidly developing area. We thank the organizers of the robustness and diagnostics program Werner Stuetzle, Luke Tierney, Edward Wegman, Allan R. Wilks, and especially Andreas Buja and Paul A. Tukey who edited the proceedings. We also take this opportunity to thank those agencies whose financial support made the summer program possible: the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Army Research Office, the National Science Foundation, the National Security Agency and the Office of Naval Research. A vner Friedman Willard Miller, Jr. PREFACE This volume covers the computational part of IMA activities in statistics during the summer of 1989. The areas of statistical computing and graphics encompass a broad range of research, much of it represented here. The vigor of this research is probably best demonstrated by the fact that as of this writing two new journals are being launched, both entirely dedicated to these areas.