  This volume is our tribute to David A. Freedman, whom we regard as one of the
great statisticians of our time. He received his B.Sc. degree from McGill
University and his Ph.D. from Princeton, and joined the Department of
Statistics of the University of California, Berkeley, in 1962, where, apart
from sabbaticals, he has been ever since. In a career of over 45 years, David
has made many fine contributions to probability and statistical theory, and to
the application of statistics. His early research was on Markov chains and
martingales, and two topics with which he has had a lifelong fascination:
exchangeability and De Finetti's theorem, and the consistency of Bayes
estimates. His asymptotic theory for the bootstrap was also highly influential.
David was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991, and in
2003 he received the John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science from
the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In addition to his purely academic
research, David has extensive experience as a consultant, including working for
the Carnegie Commission, the City of San Francisco, and the Federal Reserve, as
well as several Departments of the U.S. Government--Energy, Treasury, Justice,
and Commerce. He has testified as an expert witness on statistics in a number
of law cases, including Piva v. Xerox (employment discrimination), Garza v.
County of Los Angeles (voting rights), and New York v. Department of Commerce
(census adjustment). Lastly, he is an exceptionally good writer and teacher,
and his many books and review articles are arguably his most important
contribution to our subject.
