From the reviews: "The material is self-contained, but it is technical and a solid foundation in probability and queuing theory is beneficial to prospective readers. [... It] is intended to be accessible to those with less background. This book is a must to researchers and graduate students interested in these areas." ISI Short Book Reviews
Initially the theory of convergence in law of stochastic processes was developed quite independently from the theory of martingales, semimartingales and stochastic integrals. Apart from a few exceptions essentially concerning diffusion processes, it is only recently that the relation between the two theories has been thoroughly studied. The authors of this Grundlehren volume, two of the international leaders in the field, propose a systematic exposition of convergence in law for stochastic processes, from the point of view of semimartingale theory, with emphasis on results that are useful for mathematical theory and mathematical statistics. This leads them to develop in detail some particularly useful parts of the general theory of stochastic processes, such as martingale problems, and absolute continuity or contiguity results. The book contains an elementary introduction to the main topics: theory of martingales and stochastic integrales, Skorokhod topology, etc., as well as a large number of results which have never appeared in book form, and some entirely new results. It should be useful to the professional probabilist or mathematical statistician, and of interest also to graduate students.
This volume is the first to present a state-of-the-art overview of this field, with many results published for the first time. It covers the general conditions as well as the basic applications of the theory, and it covers and demystifies the vast and technically demanding Russian literature in detail. Its coverage is thorough, streamlined and arranged according to difficulty.
Functionals on stochastic processes; Uniform convergence of empirical measures; Convergence in distribution in euclidean spaces; Convergence in distribution in metric spaces; The uniform metric on space of cadlag functions; The skorohod metric on D [0, oo); Central limit teorems; Martingales.
Stochastic processes are tools used widely by statisticians and researchers working in the mathematics of finance. This book for self-study provides a detailed treatment of conditional expectation and probability, a topic that in principle belongs to probability theory, but is essential as a tool for stochastic processes. The book centers on exercises as the main means of explanation.
This textbook introduces the theory of stochastic processes, that is, randomness which proceeds in time. Using concrete examples like repeated gambling and jumping frogs, it presents fundamental mathematical results through simple, clear, logical theorems and examples. It covers in detail such essential material as Markov chain recurrence criteria, the Markov chain convergence theorem, and optional stopping theorems for martingales. The final chapter provides a brief introduction to Brownian motion, Markov processes in continuous time and space, Poisson processes, and renewal theory.Interspersed throughout are applications to such topics as gambler's ruin probabilities, random walks on graphs, sequence waiting times, branching processes, stock option pricing, and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms.The focus is always on making the theory as well-motivated and accessible as possible, to allow students and readers to learn this fascinating subject as easily and painlessly as possible.
An Introduction to Stochastic Modeling provides information pertinent to the standard concepts and methods of stochastic modeling. This book presents the rich diversity of applications of stochastic processes in the sciences. Organized into nine chapters, this book begins with an overview of diverse types of stochastic models, which predicts a set of possible outcomes weighed by their likelihoods or probabilities. This text then provides exercises in the applications of simple stochastic analysis to appropriate problems. Other chapters consider the study of general functions of independent, identically distributed, nonnegative random variables representing the successive intervals between renewals. This book discusses as well the numerous examples of Markov branching processes that arise naturally in various scientific disciplines. The final chapter deals with queueing models, which aid the design process by predicting system performance. This book is a valuable resource for students of engineering and management science. Engineers will also find this book useful.
Queues and stochastic networks are analyzed in this book with purely probabilistic methods. The purpose of these lectures is to show that general results from Markov processes, martingales or ergodic theory can be used directly to study the corresponding stochastic processes. Recent developments have shown that, instead of having ad-hoc methods, a better understanding of fundamental results on stochastic processes is crucial to study the complex behavior of stochastic networks. In this book, various aspects of these stochastic models are investigated in depth in an elementary way: Existence of equilibrium, characterization of stationary regimes, transient behaviors (rare events, hitting times) and critical regimes, etc. A simple presentation of stationary point processes and Palm measures is given. Scaling methods and functional limit theorems are a major theme of this book. In particular, a complete chapter is devoted to fluid limits of Markov processes.
