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This book presents papers that originally appeared in the Japanese journal Sugaku. The papers fall into the general area of mathematical analysis as it pertains to probability and statistics, dynamical systems, differential equations and analytic function theory. Among the topics discussed are: stochastic differential equations, spectra of the Laplacian and Schrödinger operators, nonlinear partial differential equations which generate dissipative dynamical systems, fractal analysis on self-similar sets and the global structure of analytic functions.

This volume contains translations of papers that originally appeared in the Japanese journal Sūgaku. The papers range over a variety of topics in probability theory, statistics, and applications. This volume is suitable for graduate students and research mathematicians interested in probability and statistics.

The topics discussed in this book can be classified into three parts:(i) Gaussian processes. The most general and in fact final representation theory of Gaussian processes is included in this book. This theory is still referred to often and its developments are discussed.(ii) White noise analysis. This book includes the notes of the series of lectures delivered in 1975 at Carleton University in Ottawa. They describe the very original idea of introducing the notion of generalized Brownian functionals (nowadays called “generalized white noise functionals”, and sometimes “Hida distribution”.(iii) Variational calculus for random fields. This topic will certainly represent one of the driving research lines for probability theory in the next century, as can be seen from several papers in this volume.

This volume presents some of the most influential papers published by Rabi N. Bhattacharya, along with commentaries from international experts, demonstrating his knowledge, insight, and influence in the field of probability and its applications. For more than three decades, Bhattacharya has made significant contributions in areas ranging from theoretical statistics via analytical probability theory, Markov processes, and random dynamics to applied topics in statistics, economics, and geophysics. Selected reprints of Bhattacharya's papers are divided into three sections: Modes of Approximation, Large Times for Markov Processes, and Stochastic Foundations in Applied Sciences. The accompanying articles by the contributing authors not only help to position his work in the context of other achievements, but also provide a unique assessment of the state of their individual fields, both historically and for the next generation of researchers.Rabi N. Bhattacharya: Selected Papers will be a valuable resource for young researchers entering the diverse areas of study to which Bhattacharya has contributed. Established researchers will also appreciate this work as an account of both past and present developments and challenges for the future.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Information Technologies and Mathematical Modelling, ITMM 2018, named after A.F. Terpugov, and the 12th Workshop on Retrial Queues and Related Topics, held in Tomsk, Russia, in September 2018. The 30 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 84 submissions. The conference covers various aspects of information technologies, focusing on queueing theory, stochastic processes, Markov processes, renewal theory, network performance equation and network protocols.

The articles in this volume were contributed by the friends of Lucien Le Cam on the occasion of his 70th birthday in November 1994. We wish him a belated happy birthday. In addition to all the usual excuses for our tardiness in the preparation of the volume, we must point to the miracles of modern computing..Az3 the old proverb almost put it: there's many a slip'twixt \cup and \baselineskip. We beg forgiveness of any of our infinitely patient contributors who find that the final product does not quite match with the galley proofs. Our task was also made harder by the sad death of our friend and fellow editor, Erik Torgersen. We greatly appreciate the editorial help of David Donoho with one of the more troublesome contributions. In addition to the 29 contributed articles, we have included a short vita, a list of publications, and a list of Lucien's Ph.D. students. We are also pleased that Lucien allowed us to include a private letter, written to Grace Yang, in response to a query about the extent of his formal mathematical training. The letter gives some insights into what made Lucien one of the leading mathematical statisticians of the century.

The first six chapters of this volume present the author's'predictive'or information theoretic'approach to statistical mechanics, in which the basic probability distributions over microstates are obtained as distributions of maximum entropy (Le., as distributions that are most non-committal with regard to missing information among all those satisfying the macroscopically given constraints). There is then no need to make additional assumptions of ergodicity or metric transitivity; the theory proceeds entirely by inference from macroscopic measurements and the underlying dynamical assumptions. Moreover, the method of maximizing the entropy is completely general and applies, in particular, to irreversible processes as well as to reversible ones. The next three chapters provide a broader framework - at once Bayesian and objective - for maximum entropy inference. The basic principles of inference, including the usual axioms of probability, are seen to rest on nothing more than requirements of consistency, above all, the requirement that in two problems where we have the same information we must assign the same probabilities. Thus, statistical mechanics is viewed as a branch of a general theory of inference, and the latter as an extension of the ordinary logic of consistency. Those who are familiar with the literature of statistics and statistical mechanics will recognize in both of these steps a genuine'scientific revolution'- a complete reversal of earlier conceptions - and one of no small significance.

Recent Developments in Infinite-Dimensional Analysis and Quantum Probability is dedicated to Professor Takeyuki Hida on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The book is more than a collection of articles. In fact, in it the reader will find a consistent editorial work, devoted to attempting to obtain a unitary picture from the different contributions and to give a comprehensive account of important recent developments in contemporary white noise analysis and some of its applications. For this reason, not only the latest results, but also motivations, explanations and connections with previous work have been included. The wealth of applications, from number theory to signal processing, from optimal filtering to information theory, from the statistics of stationary flows to quantum cable equations, show the power of white noise analysis as a tool. Beyond these, the authors emphasize its connections with practically all branches of contemporary probability, including stochastic geometry, the structure theory of stationary Gaussian processes, Neumann boundary value problems, and large deviations.

The book collects papers on several topics in probability and stochastic processes. These papers have been presented at a conference organised in honour of Professor Rajeeva L. Karandikar who turned 65 in 2021. He was a distinguished researcher and a teacher at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi Centre, for many years. He has been a multi-faceted academician, interacting with the Government of India and the industry. He has left an indelible mark in every endeavour of his and in his several different avatars—be it in the ISI, in the industry or as Director of Chennai Mathematical Institute. This book will be useful to senior undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers in probability, statistics and related fields.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Belief Functions, BELIEF 2024, held in Belfast, UK, in September 2–4, 2024. The 30 full papers presented in this book were carefully selected and reviewed from 36 submissions. The papers cover a wide range on theoretical aspects on Machine learning; Statistical inference; Information fusion and optimization; Measures of uncertainty, conflict and distances; Continuous belief functions, logics, computation.

This book publishes select papers presented at the 4th International Conference on Frontiers in Industrial and Applied Mathematics (FIAM-2021), held at the Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology, Longowal, Punjab, India, from 21–22 December 2021. Most of the papers deal with mathematical theory embedded with its applications to engineering and sciences. This book illustrates numerical simulation of scientific problems and the state-of-the-art research in industrial and applied mathematics, including various computational and modeling techniques with case studies and concrete examples. Graduate students and researchers, who are interested in real applications of mathematics in the areas of computational and theoretical fluid dynamics, solid mechanics, optimization and operations research, numerical analysis, bio-mathematics, fuzzy, control and systems theory, dynamical systems and nonlinear analysis, algebra and approximation theory, will find the book useful.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Belief Functions, BELIEF 2022, held in Paris, France, in October 2022.The theory of belief functions is now well established as a general framework for reasoning with uncertainty, and has well-understood connections to other frameworks such as probability, possibility, and imprecise probability theories. It has been applied in diverse areas such as machine learning, information fusion, and pattern recognition. The 29 full papers presented in this book were carefully selected and reviewed from 31 submissions. The papers cover a wide range on theoretical aspects on mathematical foundations, statistical inference as well as on applications in various areas including classification, clustering, data fusion, image processing, and much more.

This book collects papers presented at the International Conference on Mathematical Modelling and Computational Intelligence Techniques (ICMMCIT) 2021, held at the Department of Mathematics, The Gandhigram Rural Institute (Deemed to be University), Gandhigram, Tamil Nadu, India, from 10–12 February 2021. Significant contributions from renowned researchers from fields of applied analysis, mathematical modelling and computing techniques have been received for this conference. Chapters emphasize on the research of computational nature focusing on new algorithms, their analysis and numerical results, as well as applications in physical, biological, social, and behavioural sciences. The accepted papers are organized in topical sections as mathematical modelling, image processing, control theory, graphs and networks, and inventory control.

This conference proceeding contains 27 peer-reviewed invited papers from leading experts as well as young researchers all over the world in the related fields that Professor Fukushima has made important contributions to. These 27 papers cover a wide range of topics in probability theory, ranging from Dirichlet form theory, Markov processes, heat kernel estimates, entropy on Wiener spaces, analysis on fractal spaces, random spanning tree and Poissonian loop ensemble, random Riemannian geometry, SLE, space-time partial differential equations of higher order, infinite particle systems, Dyson model, functional inequalities, branching process, to machine learning and Hermitizable problems for complex matrices. Researchers and graduate students interested in these areas will find this book appealing.

Highlighting the latest advances in stochastic analysis and its applications, this volume collects carefully selected and peer-reviewed papers from the 5th International Conference on Stochastic Methods (ICSM-5), held in Moscow, Russia, November 23-27, 2020. The contributions deal with diverse topics such as stochastic analysis, stochastic methods in computer science, analytical modeling, asymptotic methods and limit theorems, Markov processes, martingales, insurance and financial mathematics, queueing theory and stochastic networks, reliability theory, risk analysis, statistical methods and applications, machine learning and data analysis. The 29 articles in this volume are a representative sample of the 87 high-quality papers accepted and presented during the conference. The aim of the ICSM-5 conference is to promote the collaboration of researchers from Russia and all over the world, and to contribute to the development of the field of stochastic analysis and applications of stochastic models.

This volume collects papers, based on invited talks given at the IMA workshop in Modeling, Stochastic Control, Optimization, and Related Applications, held at the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications, University of Minnesota, during May and June, 2018. There were four week-long workshops during the conference. They are (1) stochastic control, computation methods, and applications, (2) queueing theory and networked systems, (3) ecological and biological applications, and (4) finance and economics applications. For broader impacts, researchers from different fields covering both theoretically oriented and application intensive areas were invited to participate in the conference. It brought together researchers from multi-disciplinary communities in applied mathematics, applied probability, engineering, biology, ecology, and networked science, to review, and substantially update most recent progress. As an archive, this volume presents some of the highlights of the workshops, and collect papers covering a broad range of topics.

This volume comprises selected, revised papers from the Joint CIM-WIAS Workshop, TAAO 2017, held in Lisbon, Portugal, in December 2017. The workshop brought together experts from research groups at the Weierstrass Institute in Berlin and mathematics centres in Portugal to present and discuss current scientific topics and to promote existing and future collaborations. The papers include the following topics: PDEs with applications to material sciences, thermodynamics and laser dynamics, scientific computing, nonlinear optimization and stochastic analysis.

This book comprises nine selected works on numerical and computational methods for solving multiobjective optimization, game theory, and machine learning problems. It provides extended versions of selected papers from various fields of science such as computer science, mathematics and engineering that were presented at EVOLVE 2013 held in July 2013 at Leiden University in the Netherlands. The internationally peer-reviewed papers include original work on important topics in both theory and applications, such as the role of diversity in optimization, statistical approaches to combinatorial optimization, computational game theory, and cell mapping techniques for numerical landscape exploration. Applications focus on aspects including robustness, handling multiple objectives, and complex search spaces in engineering design and computational biology.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Scientific Conference on Information Technologies and Mathematical Modeling, named after A. F. Terpugov, ITMM 2016, held in Katun, Russia, in September 2016.The 33 full papers presented together with 4 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 96 submissions. They are devoted to new results in the queueing theory and its applications, addressing specialists in probability theory, random processes, mathematical modeling as well as engineers dealing with logical and technical design and operational management of telecommunication and computer networks.

As in the previous Seminar Notes, the current volume reflects general trends in the study of Geometric Aspects of Functional Analysis. Most of the papers deal with different aspects of Asymptotic Geometric Analysis, understood in a broad sense; many continue the study of geometric and volumetric properties of convex bodies and log-concave measures in high-dimensions and in particular the mean-norm, mean-width, metric entropy, spectral-gap, thin-shell and slicing parameters, with applications to Dvoretzky and Central-Limit-type results. The study of spectral properties of various systems, matrices, operators and potentials is another central theme in this volume. As expected, probabilistic tools play a significant role and probabilistic questions regarding Gaussian noise stability, the Gaussian Free Field and First Passage Percolation are also addressed. The historical connection to the field of Classical Convexity is also well represented with new properties and applications of mixed-volumes. The interplay between the real convex and complex pluri-subharmonic settings continues to manifest itself in several additional articles. All contributions are original research papers and were subject to the usual refereeing standards.

This collection of papers gives a representative cross-selectional view of recent developments in the field. After a survey paper by C. Lefèvre, 17 other research papers look at stochastic modeling of epidemics, both from a theoretical and a statistical point of view. Some look more specifically at a particular disease such as AIDS, malaria, schistosomiasis and diabetes.

This volume highlights Prof. Hira Koul's achievements in many areas of Statistics, including Asymptotic theory of statistical inference, Robustness, Weighted empirical processes and their applications, Survival Analysis, Nonlinear time series and Econometrics, among others. Chapters are all original papers that explore the frontiers of these areas and will assist researchers and graduate students working in Statistics, Econometrics and related areas. Prof. Hira Koul was the first Ph.D. student of Prof. Peter Bickel. His distinguished career in Statistics includes the receipt of many prestigious awards, including the Senior Humbolt award (1995), and dedicated service to the profession through editorial work for journals and through leadership roles in professional societies, notably as the past president of the International Indian Statistical Association. Prof. Hira Koul has graduated close to 30 Ph.D. students, and made several seminal contributions in about 125 innovative research papers. The long list of his distinguished collaborators is represented by the contributors to this volume.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Scientific Conference on Information Technologies and Mathematical Modeling, named after A.F. Terpugov, ITMM 2014, Anzhero-Sudzhensk, Russia, held in Anzhero-Sudzhensk, Russia, in November 2014. The 50 full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 254 submissions. The papers focus on probabilistic methods and models, queueing theory, telecommunication systems, and software engineering.

GeoENV96, the First European Conference on Geostatistics for Environmental Applications held in Lisbon, was conceived to bring together researchers, mostly from, but not limited to Europe, working on environmental issues approached by geostatistical methods. Papers were attracted from fields as diverse as hydrogeology. biology, soil sciences, air pollution or ecology. It is clear that there is a lot of activity on geostatistics for environmental applications as the collection of papers in this book reveals. GeoENV96 was successful in the number and quality of the papers presented which surpassed the initial expectations. There is still a large dispersion on the level of application of geostatistics in the different areas. To help in spreading the most novel applications of geostatistics across disciplines and to discuss the specific problems related to the application of geostatistics to environmental applications, geoENV96 is intended to set the pace and to be the first of a series of biennial meetings. The pace is set, now let us wait for geoENV98. Lisbon, November 1996 The Executive Committee: Jaime Gomez-Hernandez Roland Froidevaux Amflcar Soares TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword.................................................. Vll Hydrology, Groundwater, Groundwater Contaminantion Equivalent Transmissivities in Heterogeneous Porous Media under Radially Convergent Flow X. Sanchez-Vila, c.L. Axness and J. Carrera...........................

The Second European Conference on Geostatistics for Environmental Ap­ plications took place in Valencia, November 18-20, 1998. Two years have past from the first meeting in Lisbon and the geostatistical community has kept active in the environmental field. In these days of congress inflation, we feel that continuity can only be achieved by ensuring quality in the papers. For this reason, all papers in the book have been reviewed by, at least, two referees, and care has been taken to ensure that the reviewer comments have been incorporated in the final version of the manuscript. We are thankful to the members of the scientific committee for their timely review of the scripts. All in all, there are three keynote papers from experts in soil science, climatology and ecology and 43 contributed papers providing a good indication of the status of geostatistics as applied in the environ­ mental field all over the world. We feel now confident that the geoENV conference series, seeded around a coffee table almost six years ago, will march firmly into the next century.

Like the first three volumes, published in 1981, 1984 and 1987 and met with a lively response, the present volume is collecting contributions stressed on methodology or successful industrial applications. The papers are classified under three main headings; sampling inspection, process quality control and experimental design. In the first group there are nine papers on acceptance sampling. The second large group of papers deal with control charts and process control and the third group of papers includes contributions on experimental design.

This volume has its origin in the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Workshops on'Maximum-Entropy and Bayesian Methods in Applied Statistics', held at the University of Wyoming, August 5-8, 1985, and at Seattle University, August 5-8, 1986, and August 4-7, 1987. It was anticipated that the proceedings of these workshops would be combined, so most of the papers were not collected until after the seventh workshop. Because most of the papers in this volume are in the nature of advancing theory or solving specific problems, as opposed to status reports, it is believed that the contents of this volume will be of lasting interest to the Bayesian community. The workshop was organized to bring together researchers from different fields to critically examine maximum-entropy and Bayesian methods in science and engineering as well as other disciplines. Some of the papers were chosen specifically to kindle interest in new areas that may offer new tools or insight to the reader or to stimulate work on pressing problems that appear to be ideally suited to the maximum-entropy or Bayesian method. These workshops and their proceedings could not have been brought to their final form without the support or help of a number of people.

This vol ume contains the proceedings of the second U. S. -Austral ia workshop on Renewable Resource Management held at the East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, December 9-12, 1985. The workshop was jointly sponsored by the National Science Foundation (USA) and the Department of Science and Technology (Austral ia) under the U. S. -Austral ia Cooperative Science Program. The objective of the workshop was to focus on problems associated with the management of renewable resource systems. A particular emphasis was given to methods for handling uncertain elements whieh are present in any real system. Toward this end, the partiei pants were chosen so that the collective expertise included mathematical modeling, dynamical control/game theory, ecology, and practical management of real systems. Each participant was invited to give an informal presentation in his field of expertise as related to the overall theme. The formal papers (contained in this vo 1 ume) were written after the workshop so that the authors coul d util ize the workshop experience in relating their own work to others. To further encourage this exchange, each paper contained in this volume was reviewed by two other participants who then wrote formal comments. These comments (with author's reply in some cases) are attached to the end of each paper.

This book honours the outstanding contributions of Vladimir Vapnik, a rare example of a scientist for whom the following statements hold true simultaneously: his work led to the inception of a new field of research, the theory of statistical learning and empirical inference; he has lived to see the field blossom; and he is still as active as ever. He started analyzing learning algorithms in the 1960s and he invented the first version of the generalized portrait algorithm. He later developed one of the most successful methods in machine learning, the support vector machine (SVM) – more than just an algorithm, this was a new approach to learning problems, pioneering the use of functional analysis and convex optimization in machine learning. Part I of this book contains three chapters describing and witnessing some of Vladimir Vapnik's contributions to science. In the first chapter, Léon Bottou discusses the seminal paper published in 1968 by Vapnik and Chervonenkis that lay the foundations of statistical learning theory, and the second chapter is an English-language translation of that original paper. In the third chapter, Alexey Chervonenkis presents a first-hand account of the early history of SVMs and valuable insights into the first steps in the development of the SVM in the framework of the generalised portrait method. The remaining chapters, by leading scientists in domains such as statistics, theoretical computer science, and mathematics, address substantial topics in the theory and practice of statistical learning theory, including SVMs and other kernel-based methods, boosting, PAC-Bayesian theory, online and transductive learning, loss functions, learnable function classes, notions of complexity for function classes, multitask learning, and hypothesis selection.These contributions include historical and context notes, short surveys, and comments on future research directions. This book will be of interest to researchers, engineers, and graduate students engaged with all aspects of statistical learning.

Control theory can be roughly classified as deterministic or stochastic. Each of these can further be subdivided into game theory and optimal control theory. The central problem of control theory is the so called constrained maximization (which-­ with slight modifications--is equivalent to minimization). One can then say, heuristically, that the major problem of control theory is to find the maximum of some performance criterion (or criteria), given a set of constraints. The starting point is, of course, a mathematical representation of the performance criterion (or criteria)-­ sometimes called the objective functional--along with the constraints. When the objective functional is single valued (Le., when there is only one objective to be maximized), then one is dealing with optimal control theory. When more than one objective is involved, and the objectives are generally incompatible, then one is dealing with game theory. The first paper deals with stochastic optimal control, using the dynamic programming approach. The next two papers deal with deterministic optimal control, and the final two deal with applications of game theory to ecological problems. In his contribution, Dr. Marc Mangel applies the dynamic proQramming approach, as modified by his recent work--with Dr. Colin Clark, from the University of British Columbia (Mangel and Clark 1987}•--to modelling the'behavioral decisions'of insects. The objective functional is a measure of fitness. Readers interested in detailed development of the subject matter may consult Mangel (1985). My contributions deal with two applications of optimal control theory.

The use of probabilistic methods in the biological sciences has been so well established by now that mathematical biology is regarded by many as a distinct dis­ cipline with its own repertoire of techniques. The purpose of the Workshop on sto­ chastic methods in biology held at Nagoya University during the week of July 8-12, 1985, was to enable biologists and probabilists from Japan and the U. S. to discuss the latest developments in their respective fields and to exchange ideas on the ap­ plicability of the more recent developments in stochastic process theory to problems in biology. Eighteen papers were presented at the Workshop and have been grouped under the following headings: I. Population genetics (five papers) II. Measure valued diffusion processes related to population genetics (three papers) III. Neurophysiology (two papers) IV. Fluctuation in living cells (two papers) V. Mathematical methods related to other problems in biology, epidemiology, population dynamics, etc. (six papers) An important feature of the Workshop and one of the reasons for organizing it has been the fact that the theory of stochastic differential equations (SDE's) has found a rich source of new problems in the fields of population genetics and neuro­ biology. This is especially so for the relatively new and growing area of infinite dimensional, i. e., measure-valued or distribution-valued SDE's. The papers in II and III and some of the papers in the remaining categories represent these areas.

On October 16 and 17, 2000, we hosted an international workshop entitled'Statistical Design, Measurement, and Analysis of Health Related Quality of Life.'The workshop was held in the beautiful city of Arradon, South Brittany, France with the main goal of fostering an interdisciplinary forum for discussion of theoretical and applied statistical issues arising in studies of health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Included were biostatisticians, psychometricians and public health professionals (e.g., physicians, sociologists, psychologists) active in the study ofHRQoL. In assembling this volume, we invited each conference participant to contribute a paper based on his or her presentation and the ensuing and very interesting discussions that took place in Arradon. All papers were peer-reviewed, by anonymous reviewers, and revised before final editing and acceptance. Although this process was quite time­ consuming, we believe that it greatly improved the volume as a whole, making this book a valuable contribution to the field ofHRQoL research. The volume presents a broad spectrum of papers presented at the Workshop, and thus illustrates the range of current research related to the theory, methods and applications of HRQoL, as well as the interdisciplinary nature ofthis work. Following an introduction written by Sir David Cox, it includes 27 articles organized into the following chapters.

Foundations of Bayesianism is an authoritative collection of papers addressing the key challenges that face the Bayesian interpretation of probability today. Some of these papers seek to clarify the relationships between Bayesian, causal and logical reasoning. Others consider the application of Bayesianism to artificial intelligence, decision theory, statistics and the philosophy of science and mathematics. The volume includes important criticisms of Bayesian reasoning and also gives an insight into some of the points of disagreement amongst advocates of the Bayesian approach. The upshot is a plethora of new problems and directions for Bayesians to pursue. The book will be of interest to graduate students or researchers who wish to learn more about Bayesianism than can be provided by introductory textbooks to the subject. Those involved with the applications of Bayesian reasoning will find essential discussion on the validity of Bayesianism and its limits, while philosophers and others interested in pure reasoning will find new ideas on normativity and the logic of belief.

In his essay on'Broad on Induction and Probability'(first published in 1959, reprinted in this volume), Professor G. H. von Wright writes:'If Broad's writings on induction have remained less known than some of his other contributions to philosophy..., one reason for this is that Broad never has published a book on the subject. It is very much to be hoped that, for the benefit of future students, Broad's chief papers on induction and probability will be collected in a single volume....'The present volume attempts to perform this service to future students of induction and probability. The suggestion of publishing a volume of this kind in Synthese Library was first made by Professor Donald Davidson, one of the editors of the Library, and was partly prompted by Professor von Wright's statement. In carrying out this suggestion, the editors of Synthese Library have had the generous support of Professor Broad who has among other things supplied a new Addendum to'The Principles of Problematic Induction'and corrected a number of misprints found in the first printings of this paper. The editors gratefully acknow­ ledge Professor Broad's help and encouragement. A bibliography of Professor Broad's writings (up to 1959) has been compiled by Dr. C. Lewy and has appeared in P. A. Schilpp, editor, The Philosophy of C. D. Broad (The Library of Living Philosophers), pp. 833-852.

International Federation of Classification Societies The International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS) is an agency for the dissemination of technical and scientific information concerning classification and data analysis in the broad sense and in as wide a· range of applications as possible; founded in 1985 in Cambridge (UK) from the following Scientific Societies and Groups: British Classification Society -BCS; Classification Society of North America -CSNA; Gesellschaft fUr Klassifikation -GfKl; Japanese Classification Society -JCS; Classification Group of Italian Statistical Society - COSIS; Societe Francophone de Classification -SFC. Now the IFCS includes the following Societies: Dutch-Belgian Classification Society - VOC; Polish Classification Section - SKAD; Portuguese Classification Association - CLAD; Group-at-Large; Korean Classification Society -KCS. Biannual Meeting of the Classification and Data Analysis Group of SIS The biannual meeting of the Classification and Data Analysis Group of Societa Italiana di Statistica (SIS) was held in Pescara, July 3 -4, 1997. The 69 papers presented were divided in 17 sessions. Each session was organized by a chairperson with two invited speakers and two contributed papers from a call for papers. All the works were referred. Furthermore, during the meeting a discussant was provided for each session. A short version of the papers (4 pages) was.published before the conference.

Published in honor of the sixty-fifth birthday of Professor Ingram Olkin of Stanford University. Part I contains a brief biography of Professor Olkin and an interview with him discussing his career and his research interests. Part II contains 32 technical papers written in Professor Olkin's honor by his collaborators, colleagues, and Ph.D. students. These original papers cover a wealth of topics in mathematical and applied statistics, including probability inequalities and characterizations, multivariate analysis and association, linear and nonlinear models, ranking and selection, experimental design, and approaches to statistical inference. The volume reflects the wide range of Professor Olkin's interests in and contributions to research in statistics, and provides an overview of new developments in these areas of research.

This IMA Volume in Mathematics and its Applications TIME SERIES ANALYSIS AND APPLICATIONS TO GEOPHYSICAL SYSTEMS contains papers presented at a very successful workshop on the same title. The event which was held on November 12-15, 2001 was an integral part of the IMA 2001-2002 annual program on'Mathematics in the Geosciences.'We would like to thank David R. Brillinger (Department of Statistics, Uni­ versity of California, Berkeley), Enders Anthony Robinson (Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, Columbia University), and Fred­ eric Paik Schoenberg (Department of Statistics, University of California, Los Angeles) for their superb role as workshop organizers and editors of the proceedings. We are also grateful to Robert H. Shumway (Department of Statistics, University of California, Davis) for his help in organizing the four-day event. We take this opportunity to thank the National Science Foundation for its support of the IMA. Series Editors Douglas N. Arnold, Director of the IMA Fadil Santosa, Deputy Director of the IMA v PREFACE This volume contains a collection of papers that were presented dur­ ing the Workshop on Time Series Analysis and Applications to Geophysical Systems at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) at the University of Minnesota from November 12-15, 2001. This was part of the IMA Thematic Year on Mathematics in the Geosciences, and was the last in a series of four Workshops during the Fall Quarter dedicated to Dynamical Systems and Ergodic Theory.

Empirical measurement of impacts of active labour market programmes has started to become a central task of economic researchers. New improved econometric methods have been developed that will probably influence future empirical work in various other fields of economics as well. This volume contains a selection of original papers from leading experts, among them James J. Heckman, Noble Prize Winner 2000 in economics, addressing these econometric issues at the theoretical and empirical level. The theoretical part contains papers on tight bounds of average treatment effects, instrumental variables estimators, impact measurement with multiple programme options and statistical profiling. The empirical part provides the reader with econometric evaluations of active labour market programmes in Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Slovak Republic and Sweden.

Eugene A. Feinberg Adam Shwartz This volume deals with the theory of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) and their applications. Each chapter was written by a leading expert in the re­ spective area. The papers cover major research areas and methodologies, and discuss open questions and future research directions. The papers can be read independently, with the basic notation and concepts ofSection 1.2. Most chap­ ters should be accessible by graduate or advanced undergraduate students in fields of operations research, electrical engineering, and computer science. 1.1 AN OVERVIEW OF MARKOV DECISION PROCESSES The theory of Markov Decision Processes-also known under several other names including sequential stochastic optimization, discrete-time stochastic control, and stochastic dynamic programming-studiessequential optimization ofdiscrete time stochastic systems. The basic object is a discrete-time stochas­ tic system whose transition mechanism can be controlled over time. Each control policy defines the stochastic process and values of objective functions associated with this process. The goal is to select a'good'control policy. In real life, decisions that humans and computers make on all levels usually have two types ofimpacts: (i) they cost orsavetime, money, or other resources, or they bring revenues, as well as (ii) they have an impact on the future, by influencing the dynamics. In many situations, decisions with the largest immediate profit may not be good in view offuture events. MDPs model this paradigm and provide results on the structure and existence of good policies and on methods for their calculation.

This book contains the proceedings of the conference'Fractals in Graz 2001 - Analysis, Dynamics, Geometry, Stochastics'that was held in the second week of June 2001 at Graz University of Technology, in the capital of Styria, southeastern province of Austria. The scientific committee of the meeting consisted of M. Barlow (Vancouver), R. Strichartz (Ithaca), P. Grabner and W. Woess (both Graz), the latter two being the local organizers and editors of this volume. We made an effort to unite in the conference as well as in the present pro­ ceedings a multitude of different directions of active current work, and to bring together researchers from various countries as well as research fields that all are linked in some way with the modern theory of fractal structures. Although (or because) in Graz there is only a very small group working on fractal structures, consisting of'non-insiders', we hope to have been successful with this program of wide horizons. All papers were written upon explicit invitation by the editors, and we are happy to be able to present this representative panorama of recent work on poten­ tial theory, random walks, spectral theory, fractal groups, dynamic systems, fractal geometry, and more. The papers presented here underwent a refereeing process.

Aspects of Robust Statistics are important in many areas. Based on the International Conference on Robust Statistics 2001 (ICORS 2001) in Vorau, Austria, this volume discusses future directions of the discipline, bringing together leading scientists, experienced researchers and practitioners, as well as younger researchers. The papers cover a multitude of different aspects of Robust Statistics. For instance, the fundamental problem of data summary (weights of evidence) is considered and its robustness properties are studied. Further theoretical subjects include e.g.: robust methods for skewness, time series, longitudinal data, multivariate methods, and tests. Some papers deal with computational aspects and algorithms. Finally, the aspects of application and programming tools complete the volume.

Many notions and results presented in the previous editions of this volume have since become quite popular in applications, and many of them have been “rediscovered” in applied papers. In the present 3rd edition small changes were made to the chapters in which long-time behavior of the perturbed system is determined by large deviations. Most of these changes concern terminology. In particular, it is explained that the notion of sub-limiting distribution for a given initial point and a time scale is identical to the idea of metastability, that the stochastic resonance is a manifestation of metastability, and that the theory of this effect is a part of the large deviation theory. The reader will also find new comments on the notion of quasi-potential that the authors introduced more than forty years ago, and new references to recent papers in which the proofs of some conjectures included in previous editions have been obtained. Apart from the above mentioned changes the main innovations in the 3rd edition concern the averaging principle. A new Section on deterministic perturbations of one-degree-of-freedom systems was added in Chapter 8. It is shown there that pure deterministic perturbations of an oscillator may lead to a stochastic, in a certain sense, long-time behavior of the system, if the corresponding Hamiltonian has saddle points. The usefulness of a joint consideration of classical theory of deterministic perturbations together with stochastic perturbations is illustrated in this section. Also a new Chapter 9 has been inserted in which deterministic and stochastic perturbations of systems with many degrees of freedom are considered. Because of the resonances, stochastic regularization in this case is even more important.

These three volumes comprise the proceedings of the US/Japan Conference, held in honour of Professor H. Akaike, on the `Frontiers of Statistical Modeling: an Informational Approach'. The major theme of the conference was the implementation of statistical modeling through an informational approach to complex, real-world problems. Volume 1 contains papers which deal with the Theory and Methodology of Time Series Analysis. Volume 1 also contains the text of the Banquet talk by E. Parzen and the keynote lecture of H. Akaike. Volume 2 is devoted to the general topic of Multivariate Statistical Modeling, and Volume 3 contains the papers relating to Engineering and Scientific Applications. For all scientists whose work involves statistics.

These three volumes comprise the proceedings of the US/Japan Conference, held in honour of Professor H. Akaike, on the `Frontiers of Statistical Modeling: an Informational Approach'. The major theme of the conference was the implementation of statistical modeling through an informational approach to complex, real-world problems. Volume 1 contains papers which deal with the Theory and Methodology of Time Series Analysis. Volume 1 also contains the text of the Banquet talk by E. Parzen and the keynote lecture of H. Akaike. Volume 2 is devoted to the general topic of Multivariate Statistical Modeling, and Volume 3 contains the papers relating to Engineering and Scientific Applications. For all scientists whose work involves statistics.

In June 2010, a conference, Probability Approximations and Beyond, was held at the National University of Singapore (NUS), in honor of pioneering mathematician Louis Chen. Chen made the first of several seminal contributions to the theory and application of Stein's method. One of his most important contributions has been to turn Stein's concentration inequality idea into an effective tool for providing error bounds for the normal approximation in many settings, and in particular for sums of random variables exhibiting only local dependence. This conference attracted a large audience that came to pay homage to Chen and to hear presentations by colleagues who have worked with him in special ways over the past 40+ years. The papers in this volume attest to how Louis Chen's cutting-edge ideas influenced and continue to influence such areas as molecular biology and computer science. He has developed applications of his work on Poisson approximation to problems of signal detection in computational biology. The original papers contained in this book provide historical context for Chen's work alongside commentary on some of his major contributions by noteworthy statisticians and mathematicians working today.