The present monograph is a comprehensive summary of the research on visibility in random fields, which I have conducted with the late Professor Micha Yadin for over ten years. This research, which resulted in several published papers and technical reports (see bibliography), was motivated by some military problems, which were brought to our attention by Mr. Pete Shugart of the US Army TRADOC Systems Analysis Activity, presently called US Army TRADOC Analysis Command. The Director ofTRASANA at the time, the late Dr. Wilbur Payne, identified the problems and encouraged the support and funding of this research by the US Army. Research contracts were first administered through the Office of Naval Research, and subsequently by the Army Research Office. We are most grateful to all involved for this support and encouragement. In 1986 I administered a three-day workshop on problem solving in the area of sto chastic visibility. This workshop was held at the White Sands Missile Range facility. A set of notes with some software were written for this workshop. This workshop led to the incorporation of some of the methods discussed in the present book into the Army simulation package CASTFOREM. Several people encouraged me to extend those notes and write the present monograph on the level of those notes, so that the material will be more widely available for applications.

The author describes the current state of the art in the theory of invariant random fields. This theory is based on several different areas of mathematics, including probability theory, differential geometry, harmonic analysis, and special functions. The present volume unifies many results scattered throughout the mathematical, physical, and engineering literature, as well as it introduces new results from this area first proved by the author. The book also presents many practical applications, in particular in such highly interesting areas as approximation theory, cosmology and earthquake engineering. It is intended for researchers and specialists working in the fields of stochastic processes, statistics, functional analysis, astronomy, and engineering.

Two of the most exciting topics of current research in stochastic networks are the complementary subjects of stability and rare events - roughly, the former deals with the typical behavior of networks, and the latter with significant atypical behavior. Both are classical topics, of interest since the early days of queueing theory, that have experienced renewed interest mo tivated by new applications to emerging technologies. For example, new stability issues arise in the scheduling of multiple job classes in semiconduc tor manufacturing, the so-called "re-entrant lines;" and a prominent need for studying rare events is associated with the design of telecommunication systems using the new ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) technology so as to guarantee quality of service. The objective of this volume is hence to present a sample - by no means comprehensive - of recent research problems, methodologies, and results in these two exciting and burgeoning areas. The volume is organized in two parts, with the first part focusing on stability, and the second part on rare events. But it is impossible to draw sharp boundaries in a healthy field, and inevitably some articles touch on both issues and several develop links with other areas as well. Part I is concerned with the issue of stability in queueing networks.

The book focuses on stochastic modeling of population processes. The book presents new symbolic mathematical software to develop practical methodological tools for stochastic population modeling. The book assumes calculus and some knowledge of mathematical modeling, including the use of differential equations and matrix algebra.

This book provides a mathematically rigorous treatment of the theory of nonparametric estimation and prediction for stochastic processes. It discusses discrete time and continuous time, and the emphasis is on the kernel methods. Several new results are presented concerning optimal and superoptimal convergence rates. How to implement the method is discussed in detail and several numerical results are presented. This book will be of interest to specialists in mathematical statistics and to those who wish to apply these methods to practical problems involving time series analysis.

The book offers an accessible reference for researchers in the probability, statistics and special functions communities. It gives a variety of interdisciplinary relations between the two main ingredients of stochastic processes and orthogonal polynomials. It covers topics like time dependent and asymptotic analysis for birth-death processes and diffusions, martingale relations for Lévy processes, stochastic integrals and Stein's approximation method. Almost all well-known orthogonal polynomials, which are brought together in the so-called Askey Scheme, come into play. This volume clearly illustrates the powerful mathematical role of orthogonal polynomials in the analysis of stochastic processes and is made accessible for all mathematicians with a basic background in probability theory and mathematical analysis. Wim Schoutens is a Postdoctoral Researcher of the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders (Belgium). He received his PhD in Science from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.

The present lecture notes describe stochastic epidemic models and methods for their statistical analysis. Our aim is to present ideas for such models, and methods for their analysis; along the way we make practical use of several probabilistic and statistical techniques. This will be done without focusing on any specific disease, and instead rigorously analyzing rather simple models. The reader of these lecture notes could thus have a two-fold purpose in mind: to learn about epidemic models and their statistical analysis, and/or to learn and apply techniques in probability and statistics. The lecture notes require an early graduate level knowledge of probability and They introduce several techniques which might be new to students, but our statistics. intention is to present these keeping the technical level at a minlmum. Techniques that are explained and applied in the lecture notes are, for example: coupling, diffusion approximation, random graphs, likelihood theory for counting processes, martingales, the EM-algorithm and MCMC methods. The aim is to introduce and apply these techniques, thus hopefully motivating their further theoretical treatment. A few sections, mainly in Chapter 5, assume some knowledge of weak convergence; we hope that readers not familiar with this theory can understand the these parts at a heuristic level. The text is divided into two distinct but related parts: modelling and estimation.

This monograph highlights the connection between the theoretical work done by research statisticians and the impact that work has on various industries. Drawing on decades of experience as an industry consultant, the author details how his contributions have had a lasting impact on the field of statistics as a whole. Aspiring statisticians and data scientists will be motivated to find practical applications for their knowledge, as they see how such work can yield breakthroughs in their field. Each chapter highlights a consulting position the author held that resulted in a significant contribution to statistical theory. Topics covered include tracking processes with change points, estimating common parameters, crossing fields with absorption points, military operations research, sampling surveys, stochastic visibility in random fields, reliability analysis, applied probability, and more. Notable advancements within each of these topics are presented by analyzing the problems facing various industries, and how solving those problems contributed to the development of the field. The Career of a Research Statistician is ideal for researchers, graduate students, or industry professionals working in statistics. It will be particularly useful for up-and-coming statisticians interested in the promising connection between academia and industry.

The object of the present work is a systematic statistical analysis of bilinear processes in the frequency domain. The first two chapters are devoted to the basic theory of nonlinear functions of stationary Gaussian processes, Hermite polynomials, cumulants and higher order spectra, multiple Wiener-Itô integrals and finally chaotic Wiener-Itô spectral representation of subordinated processes. There are two chapters for general nonlinear time series problems.

Ten years ago Bill Gale of AT&T Bell Laboratories was primary organizer of the first Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics. In the early days of the Workshop series it seemed clear that researchers in AI and statistics had common interests, though with different emphases, goals, and vocabularies. In learning and model selection, for example, a historical goal of AI to build autonomous agents probably contributed to a focus on parameter-free learning systems, which relied little on an external analyst's assumptions about the data. This seemed at odds with statistical strategy, which stemmed from a view that model selection methods were tools to augment, not replace, the abilities of a human analyst. Thus, statisticians have traditionally spent considerably more time exploiting prior information of the environment to model data and exploratory data analysis methods tailored to their assumptions. In statistics, special emphasis is placed on model checking, making extensive use of residual analysis, because all models are 'wrong', but some are better than others. It is increasingly recognized that AI researchers and/or AI programs can exploit the same kind of statistical strategies to good effect. Often AI researchers and statisticians emphasized different aspects of what in retrospect we might now regard as the same overriding tasks.