Book excerpt: Providing a general guide to statistical methods used in the pharmaceutical industry, and illustrating how to use S-PLUS to implement these methods, the book explains why S-PLUS is a useful software package and discusses the results and implications of each particular application. It is targeted at graduates in biostatistics, statisticians involved in the industry as research scientists, regulators, academics, and/or consultants who want to know more about how to use S-PLUS and learn about other sub-fields within the industry, as well as statisticians in other fields who want to know more about statistical applications in the pharmaceutical industry.