Robust Asymptotic Statistics

1 To the king, my lord, from your servant Balasi : 2 ... The king should have a look. Maybe the scribe who reads to the king did not understand . . . . shall I personally show, with this tablet that I am sending to the king, my lord, how the omen was written. 3 Really, he who has not followed the text with his finger cannot possibly understand it. This book is about optimally robust functionals and their unbiased esti mators and tests. Functionals extend the parameter of the assumed ideal center model to neighborhoods of this model that contain the actual distri bution. The two principal questions are (F): Which functional to choose? and (P): Which statistical procedure to use for the selected functional? Using a local asymptotic framework, we deal with both problems by linking up nonparametric statistical optimality with infinitesimal robust ness criteria. Thus, seemingly separate developments in robust statistics are presented in a unifying way.