The International Conference on Linear Statistical Inference LINSTAT'93 was held in Poznan, Poland, from May 31 to June 4, 1993. The purpose of the confer­ ence was to enable scientists, from various countries, engaged in the diverse areas of statistical sciences and practice to meet together and exchange views and re­ sults related to the current research on linear statistical inference in its broadest sense. Thus, the conference programme included sessions on estimation, prediction and testing in linear models, on robustness of some relevant statistical methods, on estimation of variance components appearing in linear models, on certain gen­ eralizations to nonlinear models, on design and analysis of experiments, including optimality and comparison of linear experiments, and on some other topics related to linear statistical inference. Within the various sessions 22 invited papers and 37 contributed papers were presented, 12 of them as posters. The conference gathered 94 participants from eighteen countries of Europe, North America and Asia. There were 53 participants from abroad and 41 from Poland. The conference was the second of this type, devoted to linear statistical inference. The first was held in Poznan in June, 4-8, 1984. Both belong to the series of confer­ ences on mathematical statistics and probability theory organized under the auspices of the Committee of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, due to the ini­ tiative and efforts of its Mathematical Statistics Section. In the years 1973-1993 there were held in Poland nineteen such conferences, some of them international.