Most manufacturing systems are large, complex, and operate in an environment of uncertainty. It is common practice to manage such systems in a hierarchical fashion. This book articulates a new theory that shows that hierarchical decision making can in fact lead to a near optimization of system goals. The material in the book cuts across disciplines. It will appeal to graduate students and researchers in applied mathematics, operations management, operations research, and system and control theory.

Stochastic portfolio theory is a mathematical methodology for constructing stock portfolios and for analyzing the effects induced on the behavior of these portfolios by changes in the distribution of capital in the market.

This monograph surveys the present state of Monte Carlo methods. we have dallied with certain topics that have interested us Although personally, we hope that our coverage of the subject is reasonably complete; at least we believe that this book and the references in it come near to exhausting the present range of the subject. On the other hand, there are many loose ends; for example we mention various ideas for variance reduction that have never been seriously appli(:d in practice. This is inevitable, and typical of a subject that has remained in its infancy for twenty years or more. We are convinced Qf:ver­ theless that Monte Carlo methods will one day reach an impressive maturity. The main theoretical content of this book is in Chapter 5; some readers may like to begin with this chapter, referring back to Chapters 2 and 3 when necessary. Chapters 7 to 12 deal with applications of the Monte Carlo method in various fields, and can be read in any order. For the sake of completeness, we cast a very brief glance in Chapter 4 at the direct simulation used in industrial and operational research, where the very simplest Monte Carlo techniques are usually sufficient. We assume that the reader has what might roughly be described as a 'graduate' knowledge of mathematics. The actual mathematical techniques are, with few exceptions, quite elementary, but we have freely used vectors, matrices, and similar mathematical language for the sake of conciseness.

The problem of outliers is one of the oldest in statistics, and during the last century and a half interest in it has waxed and waned several times. Currently it is once again an active research area after some years of relative neglect, and recent work has solved a number of old problems in outlier theory, and identified new ones. The major results are, however, scattered amongst many journal articles, and for some time there has been a clear need to bring them together in one place. That was the original intention of this monograph: but during execution it became clear that the existing theory of outliers was deficient in several areas, and so the monograph also contains a number of new results and conjectures. In view of the enormous volume ofliterature on the outlier problem and its cousins, no attempt has been made to make the coverage exhaustive. The material is concerned almost entirely with the use of outlier tests that are known (or may reasonably be expected) to be optimal in some way. Such topics as robust estimation are largely ignored, being covered more adequately in other sources. The numerous ad hoc statistics proposed in the early work on the grounds of intuitive appeal or computational simplicity also are not discussed in any detail.

This book provides the elements of probability and stochastic processes of direct interest to the applied sciences where probabilistic models play an important role, most notably in the information and communications sciences, computer sciences, operations research, and electrical engineering, but also in fields like epidemiology, biology, ecology, physics, and the earth sciences.

The book offers an introduction to the technical foundation of decentralized insurance models, for advanced undergraduate students, graduate students and practitioners. The book is self-contained and anyone with a basic knowledge of probability and statistics should be able to follow through the entire book. It adopts a minimalist approach to describe the essential elements and first principles so that readers can get a gist of these models without being overwhelmed with too much technicality. It can be used as a reference for business model designs. The inclusion of exercises and practical examples makes the book suitable for advanced courses on decentralized insurance and risk sharing.

This comprehensive book enables readers to discover the essential techniques for load forecasting in electricity networks, particularly for active distribution networks.

It is not so very long ago that up-to-date text-books on statistics were almost non-existent. In the last few decades this deficiency has largely been remedied, but in order to cope with a broad and rapidly expanding subject many of these books have been fairly big and expensive. The success of Methuen's existing series of monographs, in physics or in biology, for example, stresses the value of short inexpensive treatments to which a student can turn for an introduc­ tion to, or a revision of, specialised topics. In this new Methuen series the still-growing importance of prob­ ability theory in its applied aspects has been recognised by coupling together Probability and Statistics; and included in the series are some of the newer applications of probability theory to stochastic models in various fields, storage and service problems, 'Monte Carlo' techniques, etc. , as well as monographs on particular statistical topics.

This book presents in a compact form the program carried out in introductory statistics courses and discusses some essential topics for research activity, such as Monte Carlo simulation techniques, methods of statistical inference, best fit and analysis of laboratory data. All themes are developed starting from fundamentals, highlighting their applicative aspects, up to the detailed description of several cases particularly relevant for technical and scientific research. The text is dedicated to university students in scientific fields and to all researchers who have to solve practical problems by applying data analysis and simulation procedures. The R software is adopted throughout the book, with a rich library of original programs accessible to the readers through a website.

Wesentliche Zielsetzung dieses Buchs ist eine in sich abgeschlossene Darstellung der zur Lösung inverser Probleme notwendigen Kenntnisse von der mathematischen Analyse bis zur numerischen Lösung. Konkrete Anwendungsfälle aus Naturwissenschaften und Technik geben den Umfang der benötigten mathematischen Methoden vor. Dazu gehört insbesondere die stochastische Modellierung der unvorhersehbaren Störungen von Messdaten, die bisher in Lehrbüchern zu inversen und schlecht gestellten Problemen nicht berücksichtigt wird. Die stochastische Modellierung steht in engem Zusammenhang mit der für den Computereinsatz essentiellen Diskretisierung beziehungsweise Parametrisierung inverser Probleme, auf die besonderes Augenmerk gerichtet wird. Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt ist die praktische Lösung der aus der Diskretisierung resultierenden globalen, im Allgemeinen nichtlinearen Optimierungsprobleme. Hingegen wird auf die Besprechung einer abstrakten Theorie der Regularisierung verzichtet.

This book presents applied probability and stochastic processes in an elementary but mathematically precise manner, with numerous examples and exercises to illustrate the range of engineering and science applications of the concepts. The book is designed to give the reader an intuitive understanding of probabilistic reasoning, in addition to an understanding of mathematical concepts and principles. The initial chapters present a summary of probability and statistics and then Poisson processes, Markov chains, Markov processes and queuing processes are introduced. Advanced topics include simulation, inventory theory, replacement theory, Markov decision theory, and the use of matrix geometric procedures in the analysis of queues.

This book is an introductionary course in stochastic ordering and dependence in the field of applied probability for readers with some background in mathematics. It is based on lectures and senlinars I have been giving for students at Mathematical Institute of Wroclaw University, and on a graduate course a.t Industrial Engineering Department of Texas A&M University, College Station, and addressed to a reader willing to use for example Lebesgue measure, conditional expectations with respect to sigma fields, martingales, or compensators as a common language in this field.

Applied probability is a broad research area that is of interest to scientists in diverse disciplines in science and technology, including: anthropology, biology, communication theory, economics, epidemiology, finance, geography, linguistics, medicine, meteorology, operations research, psychology, quality control, sociology, and statistics. Recent Advances in Applied Probability is a collection of survey articles that bring together the work of leading researchers in applied probability to present current research advances in this important area.

Despite the fears of university mathematics departments, mathematics educat,ion is growing rather than declining. But the truth of the matter is that the increases are occurring outside departments of mathematics. Engineers, computer scientists, physicists, chemists, economists, statis- cians, biologists, and even philosophers teach and learn a great deal of mathematics. The teaching is not always terribly rigorous, but it tends to be better motivated and better adapted to the needs of students. In my own experience teaching students of biostatistics and mathematical bi- ogy, I attempt to convey both the beauty and utility of probability.

Fundamentals of Matrix-Analytic Methods targets advanced-level students in mathematics, engineering and computer science. It focuses on the fundamental parts of Matrix-Analytic Methods, Phase-Type Distributions, Markovian arrival processes and Structured Markov chains and matrix geometric solutions.