Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods

The Fifteenth International Workshop on Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Meth- ods was held July 31-August 4, 1995 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. St. John's College, located in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, provided a congenial setting for the Workshop. The relaxed atmosphere of the College, which was thoroughly enjoyed by all the attendees, stimulated free-flowing and thought- ful discussions. Conversations continued at the social events, which included a reception at the Santa Fe Institute, a New Mexican dinner at Richard Silver's home, and an excursion to Los Alamos that ended with a mixed grill at FUller Lodge, the main hall of the former Los Alamos Ranch School. This volume represents the Proceedings of the Workshop. Articles on the tra- ditional theme of the Workshop, application of the maximum-entropy principle and Bayesian methods for statistical inference in diverse areas of scientific re- search, are contained in these Proceedings. As is tradition, the Workshop opened with a tutorial on Bayesian methods, lucidly presented by Peter Cheeseman and Wray Buntine (NASA AMES, Moffett Field).The lecture notes for their tutorial are available on the World Wide Web at http://bayes .lanl. gov / "'maxent/. In addition, several new thrusts for the Workshop are described below.