Major theoretical advances were made in this area of research, and in the course of these developments order statistics has also found important applications in many diverse areas. These include life-testing and reliability, robustness studies, statistical quality control, filtering theory, signal processing, image processing, and radar target detection. Theoretical researchers working on theoretical and methodological advancements on order statistics and applied statisticians and engineers developing new and innovative applications of order statistics have been successfully brought together to create this handbook. For the convenience of readers, the subject matter has been divided into two volumes. This volume focuses on theory and methods, and volume 17 deals primarily with applications. Each volume has been divided into parts, each part specializing in one aspect of order statistics.