Observations in the form of point events occurring in a continuum, space or time, arise in many fields of study. In writing this monograph on statistical techniques for dealing with such data, we have three
objectives. First, we have tried to give a simple description, with numerical examples, of the main methods that have been proposed. We hope that by concentrating on the examples the applied statistician with a limited
inclination for theory will find something of practical value in the monograph. Second, the monograph is intended as a survey, necessarily incomplete, of some of the problems in theoretical statistics that stem from this sort
of data. A number of specialized subjects have, however, been dealt with only briefly, the main emphasis being placed on the problem of examining the structure of a series of events. Finally, we hope that the monograph will be
of use to teachers and students of statistics, as illustrating applications of a range of tech­ niques in theoretical statistics. We are extremely grateful to the International Business Machines Corporation for providing
programming assistance and a large amount of computer time. We wish to thank particularly Mr A.