This IMA Volume in Mathematics and its Applications DIAGNOSIS AND PREDICTION is one of the series based on the proceedings of a very successful 1997 IMA Summer Program on "Statistics in the Health Sciences. " I would like to thank Seymour Geisser of University of Minnesota, School of Statistics for his excellent work as organizer of the meeting and for editing the proceedings. I am grateful to Donald A. Berry, Duke University (Statistics); Patricia Grambsch, University of Minnesota (Biostatis­ tics); Joel Greenhouse, Carnegie Mellon University (Statistics); Nicholas Lange, Harvard Medical School (Brain Imaging Center, McLean Hospital); Barry Margolin, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (Biostatistics); Sandy Weisberg, University of Minnesota (Statistics); Scott Zeger, Johns Hopkins University (Biostatistics); and Marvin Zelen, Harvard School of Public Health (Biostatistics) for organizing the six weeks summer program. I also take this opportunity to thank the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Army Research Office (ARO), whose financial support made the workshop possible. Willard Miller, Jr. , Professor and Director v PREFACE This volume contains refereed papers submitted by participants of the third week of a six week workshop on Statistics in the Health Sciences held by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications in Minneapolis, Minnesota during July of 1997. This week was devoted to the closely related topics of Diagnosis and Prediction.