Over the last forty years there has been a growing interest to extend probability theory and statistics and to allow for more flexible modelling of imprecision, uncertainty, vagueness and ignorance. The fact that in many real-life situations data uncertainty is not only present in the form

of randomness (stochastic uncertainty) but also in the form of imprecision/fuzziness is but one point underlining the need for a widening of statistical tools. Most such extensions originate in a "softening" of classical methods, allowing, in particular, to work with imprecise or vague data, considering imprecise or generalized probabilities and fuzzy events, etc. About ten years ago the idea of establishing a recurrent forum for discussing new trends in the before-mentioned context was born and resulted in the first International Conference on Soft Methods in Probability and Statistics (SMPS) that was held in Warsaw in 2002.