Not since the Spanish flu have citizens of developed counties experienced such a large-scale disease outbreak. One reason is the success of the public health community in tracking and identifying disease outbreaks. This book is the story of the application of statistics for disease detection and tracking.

Dr. Steven E. Rigdon is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the College for Public Health & Social Justice at Saint Louis University. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Statistics from the University of Missouri-Columbia, as well as an M.A. and B.A. in Mathematics, from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is also Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mathematics and
Statistics at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Author of several books, including Statistical Methods for the Reliability of Repairable Systems published by John Wiley & Sons, and Calculus, 8th Ed. published by Pearson, Dr. Rigdon has published more than 80 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and a member of the International Society for Disease Surveillance. He is also editor of Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. In his spare time, Dr. Rigdon plays the french horn and trumpet and he is an ice hockey official.
Dr. Roland D. Fricker, Jr. is the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Administration in the Virginia Tech College of Science. He is also a professor in the Virginia Tech Department of Statistics and is a past head of the department. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in Statistics from Yale University, an M.S. in Operations Research from The George Washington University and a bachelor's degree from the United States Naval Academy. Author
of Introduction to Statistical Methods for Biosurveillance published by Cambridge University Press and nearly 100 papers, monographs, reports,
and articles, Dr. Fricker is Fellow of the American Statistical Association and an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute. He is a former chair of the Section on Statistics in Defense and National Security and a former chair of the Committee on Statisticians in Defense and National Security, both of the ASA.

1. The Next Plague. 2. Separating Signal from Noise. 3. Types of Public Health Surveillance. 4. Traditional Surveillance. 5. Syndromic Surveillance. 6. Indirect Approaches. 7. Steps in Investigating an Outbreak. 8. The Nipah Virus. 9. Smallpox and the Aralsk Incident. 10. Syphilis and the Internet. 11. The 2001 Anthrax Attack. 12. Cancer in Los Alamos. 13. Discovering the Cause of Yellow Fever. 14. Microcephaly and Zika. 15. In Conclusion