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An Introduction to Universal Artificial Intelligence provides the formal underpinning of what it means for an agent to act intelligently in an unknown environment. First presented in Universal Algorithmic Intelligence (Hutter, 2000), UAI offers a framework in which virtually all AI problems can be formulated, and a theory of how to solve them. UAI unifies ideas from sequential decision theory, Bayesian inference, and algorithmic information theory to construct AIXI, an optimal reinforcement learning agent that learns to act optimally in unknown environments. AIXI is the theoretical gold standard for intelligent behavior.The book covers both the theoretical and practical aspects of UAI. Bayesian updating can be done efficiently with context tree weighting, and planning can be approximated by sampling with Monte Carlo tree search. It provides algorithms for the reader to implement, and experimental results to compare against. These algorithms are used to approximate AIXI. The book ends with a philosophical discussion of Artificial General Intelligence: Can super-intelligent agents even be constructed? Is it inevitable that they will be constructed, and what are the potential consequences?This text is suitable for late undergraduate students. It provides an extensive chapter to fill in the required mathematics, probability, information, and computability theory background.

This Festschrift celebrates Teddy Seidenfeld and his seminal contributions to philosophy, statistics, probability, game theory and related areas. The 13 contributions in this volume, written by leading researchers in these fields, are supplemented by an interview with Teddy Seidenfeld that offers an abbreviated intellectual autobiography, touching on topics of timeless interest concerning truth and uncertainty. Indeed, as the eminent philosopher Isaac Levi writes in this volume:'In a world dominated by Alternative Facts and Fake News, it is hard to believe that many of us have spent our life's work, as has Teddy Seidenfeld, in discussing truth and uncertainty.'The reader is invited to share this celebration of Teddy Seidenfeld's work uncovering truths about uncertainty and the penetrating insights they offer to our common pursuit of truth in the face of uncertainty.

An advanced book for researchers and graduate students working in machine learning and statistics who want to learn about deep learning, Bayesian inference, generative models, and decision making under uncertainty.An advanced counterpart to Probabilistic Machine Learning: An Introduction, this high-level textbook provides researchers and graduate students detailed coverage of cutting-edge topics in machine learning, including deep generative modeling, graphical models, Bayesian inference, reinforcement learning, and causality. This volume puts deep learning into a larger statistical context and unifies approaches based on deep learning with ones based on probabilistic modeling and inference. With contributions from top scientists and domain experts from places such as Google, DeepMind, Amazon, Purdue University, NYU, and the University of Washington, this rigorous book is essential to understanding the vital issues in machine learning.Covers generation of high dimensional outputs, such as images, text, and graphs Discusses methods for discovering insights about data, based on latent variable models Considers training and testing under different distributionsExplores how to use probabilistic models and inference for causal inference and decision makingFeatures online Python code accompaniment

This book mainly focuses on the sampled-data control of logical networks. We believe that the methods (semi-tensor product of matrices), results (recent results on Boolean control networks under periodic sampled-data control, Boolean control networks under aperiodic sampled-data control, and logical control networks under event-triggered control) and topics (logical networks) in this book have become of particular interest to readers recently. Firstly, logical networks are of interest due to their rich range of applications in biology, game theory, coding, finite automata, graph theory, and other fields. Secondly, semi-tensor product of matrices offers a useful tool for formulating, analyzing and designing controllers for logical networks. Moreover, this book is the first to introduce sampled-data control into the study of logical control networks. All research results in this book are novel and worthy of further study. The book's content is divided into three parts (Boolean control networks under periodic sampled-data control, Boolean control networks under aperiodic sampled-data control, and logical control networks under event-triggered control), which essentially progress from easier to more difficult. In addition, corresponding examples and diagrams are included in each section to facilitate understanding.

A detailed and up-to-date introduction to machine learning, presented through the unifying lens of probabilistic modeling and Bayesian decision theory.This book offers a detailed and up-to-date introduction to machine learning (including deep learning) through the unifying lens of probabilistic modeling and Bayesian decision theory. The book covers mathematical background (including linear algebra and optimization), basic supervised learning (including linear and logistic regression and deep neural networks), as well as more advanced topics (including transfer learning and unsupervised learning). End-of-chapter exercises allow students to apply what they have learned, and an appendix covers notation. Probabilistic Machine Learning grew out of the author's 2012 book, Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective. More than just a simple update, this is a completely new book that reflects the dramatic developments in the field since 2012, most notably deep learning. In addition, the new book is accompanied by online Python code, using libraries such as scikit-learn, JAX, PyTorch, and Tensorflow, which can be used to reproduce nearly all the figures; this code can be run inside a web browser using cloud-based notebooks, and provides a practical complement to the theoretical topics discussed in the book. This introductory text will be followed by a sequel that covers more advanced topics, taking the same probabilistic approach.

This book provides an introduction to the theory of linear systems and control for students in business mathematics, econometrics, computer science, and engineering. The focus is on discrete time systems, which are the most relevant in business applications, as opposed to continuous time systems, requiring less mathematical preliminaries. The subjects treated are among the central topics of deterministic linear system theory: controllability, observability, realization theory, stability and stabilization by feedback, LQ-optimal control theory. Kalman filtering and LQC-control of stochastic systems are also discussed, as are modeling, time series analysis and model specification, along with model validation.This second edition has been updated and slightly expanded. In addition, supplementary material containing the exercises is now available on the Springer Link's book website.

With the diversification of Internet services and the increase in mobile users, efficient management of network resources has become an extremely important issue in the field of wireless communication networks (WCNs). Adaptive resource management is an effective tool for improving the economic efficiency of WCN systems as well as network design and construction, especially in view of the surge in mobile device demands.This book presents modelling methods based on queueing theory and Markov processes for a wide variety of WCN systems, as well as precise and approximate analytical solution methods for the numerical evaluation of the system performance.This is the first book to provide an overview of the numerical analyses that can be gleaned by applying queueing theory, traffic theory and other analytical methods to various WCN systems. It also discusses the recent advances in the resource management of WCNs, such as broadband wireless access networks, cognitive radio networks, and green cloud computing. It assumes a basic understanding of computer networks and queueing theory, and familiarity with stochastic processes is also recommended.The analysis methods presented in this book are useful for first-year-graduate or senior computer science and communication engineering students. Providing information on network design and management, performance evaluation, queueing theory, game theory, intelligent optimization, and operations research for researchers and engineers, the book is also a valuable reference resource for students, analysts, managers and anyone in the industry interested in WCN system modelling, performance analysis and numerical evaluation.

​The book shows that the analytic combinatorics (AC) method encodes the combinatorial problems of multiple object tracking—without information loss—into the derivatives of a generating function (GF). The book lays out an easy-to-follow path from theory to practice and includes salient AC application examples. Since GFs are not widely utilized amongst the tracking community, the book takes the reader from the basics of the subject to applications of theory starting from the simplest problem of single object tracking, and advancing chapter by chapter to more challenging multi-object tracking problems. Many established tracking filters (e.g., Bayes-Markov, PDA, JPDA, IPDA, JIPDA, CPHD, PHD, multi-Bernoulli, MBM, LMBM, and MHT) are derived in this manner with simplicity, economy, and considerable clarity. The AC method gives significant and fresh insights into the modeling assumptions of these filters and, thereby, also shows the potential utility of various approximation methods that are well established techniques in applied mathematics and physics, but are new to tracking. These unexplored possibilities are reviewed in the final chapter of the book.

The contributions in this book survey results on combinations of probabilistic and various other classical, temporal and justification logical systems. Formal languages of these logics are extended with probabilistic operators. The aim is to provide a systematic overview and an accessible presentation of mathematical techniques used to obtain results on formalization, completeness, compactness and decidability. The book will be of value to researchers in logic and it can be used as a supplementary text in graduate courses on non-classical logics.

This practical guidebook describes the basic concepts, the mathematical developments, and the engineering methodologies for exploiting possibility theory for the computer-based design of an information fusion system where the goal is decision support for industries in smart ICT (information and communications technologies). This exploitation of possibility theory improves upon probability theory, complements Dempster-Shafer theory, and fills an important gap in this era of Big Data and Internet of Things.The book discusses fundamental possibilistic concepts: distribution, necessity measure, possibility measure, joint distribution, conditioning, distances, similarity measures, possibilistic decisions, fuzzy sets, fuzzy measures and integrals, and finally, the interrelated theories of uncertainty..uncertainty. These topics form an essential tour of the mathematical tools needed for the latter chapters of the book. These chapters present applications related to decision-making and pattern recognition schemes, and finally, a concluding chapter on the use of possibility theory in the overall challenging design of an information fusion system. This book will appeal to researchers and professionals in the field of information fusion and analytics, information and knowledge processing, smart ICT, and decision support systems.

This book combines a model reduction technique with an efficient parametrization scheme for the purpose of solving a class of complex and computationally expensive simulation-based problems involving finite element models. These problems, which have a wide range of important applications in several engineering fields, include reliability analysis, structural dynamic simulation, sensitivity analysis, reliability-based design optimization, Bayesian model validation, uncertainty quantification and propagation, etc. The solution of this type of problems requires a large number of dynamic re-analyses. To cope with this difficulty, a model reduction technique known as substructure coupling for dynamic analysis is considered. While the use of reduced order models alleviates part of the computational effort, their repetitive generation during the simulation processes can be computational expensive due to the substantial computational overhead that arises at the substructure level. Inthis regard, an efficient finite element model parametrization scheme is considered. When the division of the structural model is guided by such a parametrization scheme, the generation of a small number of reduced order models is sufficient to run the large number of dynamic re-analyses. Thus, a drastic reduction in computational effort is achieved without compromising the accuracy of the results. The capabilities of the developed procedures are demonstrated in a number of simulation-based problems involving uncertainty.

This book presents selected peer-reviewed contributions from the International Conference on Time Series and Forecasting, ITISE 2018, held in Granada, Spain, on September 19-21, 2018. The first three parts of the book focus on the theory of time series analysis and forecasting, and discuss statistical methods, modern computational intelligence methodologies, econometric models, financial forecasting, and risk analysis. In turn, the last three parts are dedicated to applied topics and include papers on time series analysis in the earth sciences, energy time series forecasting, and time series analysis and prediction in other real-world problems. The book offers readers valuable insights into the different aspects of time series analysis and forecasting, allowing them to benefit both from its sophisticated and powerful theory, and from its practical applications, which address real-world problems in a range of disciplines. The ITISE conference series provides avaluable forum for scientists, engineers, educators and students to discuss the latest advances and implementations in the field of time series analysis and forecasting. It focuses on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research encompassing computer science, mathematics, statistics and econometrics.

The 2017 PIMS-CRM Summer School in Probability was held at the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS) at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, during June 5-30, 2017. It had 125 participants from 20 different countries, and featured two main courses, three mini-courses, and twenty-nine lectures. The lecture notes contained in this volume provide introductory accounts of three of the most active and fascinating areas of research in modern probability theory, especially designed for graduate students entering research: Scaling limits of random trees and random graphs (Christina Goldschmidt)Lectures on the Ising and Potts models on the hypercubic lattice (Hugo Duminil-Copin)Extrema of the two-dimensional discrete Gaussian free field (Marek Biskup) Each of these contributions provides a thorough introduction that will be of value to beginners and experts alike.

This book is dedicated to the systematization and development of models, methods, and algorithms for queuing systems with correlated arrivals. After first setting up the basic tools needed for the study of queuing theory, the authors concentrate on complicated systems: multi-server systems with phase type distribution of service time or single-server queues with arbitrary distribution of service time or semi-Markovian service. They pay special attention to practically important retrial queues, tandem queues, and queues with unreliable servers. Mathematical models of networks and queuing systems are widely used for the study and optimization of various technical, physical, economic, industrial, and administrative systems, and this book will be valuable for researchers, graduate students, and practitioners in these domains.

This book provides an overview of network science from the perspective of diverse academic fields, offering insights into the various research areas within network science. The authoritative contributions on statistical network analysis, mathematical network science, genetic networks, Bayesian networks, network visualisation, and systemic risk in networks explore the main questions in the respective fields: What has been achieved to date? What are the research challenges and obstacles? What are the possible interconnections with other fields? And how can cross-fertilization between these fields be promoted? Network science comprises numerous scientific disciplines, including computer science, economics, mathematics, statistics, social sciences, bioinformatics, and medicine, among many others. These diverse research areas require and use different data-analytic and numerical methods as well as different theoretical approaches. Nevertheless, they all examine and describe interdependencies, associations, and relationships of entities in different kinds of networks. The book is intended for researchers as well as interested readers working in network science who want to learn more about the field – beyond their own research or work niche. Presenting network science from different perspectives without going into too much technical detail, it allows readers to gain an overview without having to be a specialist in any or all of these disciplines.

This book focuses on recent advances, approaches, theories and applications related to mixture models. In particular, it presents recent unsupervised and semi-supervised frameworks that consider mixture models as their main tool. The chapters considers mixture models involving several interesting and challenging problems such as parameters estimation, model selection, feature selection, etc. The goal of this book is to summarize the recent advances and modern approaches related to these problems. Each contributor presents novel research, a practical study, or novel applications based on mixture models, or a survey of the literature.Reports advances on classic problems in mixture modeling such as parameter estimation, model selection, and feature selection;Present theoretical and practical developments in mixture-based modeling and their importance in different applications;Discusses perspectives and challenging future works related tomixture modeling.

The subject of this book stands at the crossroads of ergodic theory and measurable dynamics. With an emphasis on irreversible systems, the text presents a framework of multi-resolutions tailored for the study of endomorphisms, beginning with a systematic look at the latter. This entails a whole new set of tools, often quite different from those used for the “easier” and well-documented case of automorphisms. Among them is the construction of a family of positive operators (transfer operators), arising naturally as a dual picture to that of endomorphisms. The setting (close to one initiated by S. Karlin in the context of stochastic processes) is motivated by a number of recent applications, including wavelets, multi-resolution analyses, dissipative dynamical systems, and quantum theory. The automorphism-endomorphism relationship has parallels in operator theory, where the distinction is between unitary operators in Hilbert space and more general classesof operators such as contractions. There is also a non-commutative version: While the study of automorphisms of von Neumann algebras dates back to von Neumann, the systematic study of their endomorphisms is more recent; together with the results in the main text, the book includes a review of recent related research papers, some by the co-authors and their collaborators.

This book provides engineers with focused treatment of the mathematics needed to understand probability, random variables, and stochastic processes, which are essential mathematical disciplines used in communications engineering. The author explains the basic concepts of these topics as plainly as possible so that people with no in-depth knowledge of these mathematical topics can better appreciate their applications in real problems. Applications examples are drawn from various areas of communications. If a reader is interested in understanding probability and stochastic processes that are specifically important for communications networks and systems, this book serves his/her need.

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.

This is a book of elementary probability theory that includes a chapter on algorithmic randomness. It rigorously presents definitions and theorems in computation theory, and explains the meanings of the theorems by comparing them with mechanisms of the computer, which is very effective in the current computer age.Random number topics have not been treated by any books on probability theory, only some books on computation theory. However, the notion of random number is necessary for understanding the essential relation between probability and randomness. The field of probability has changed very much, thus this book will make and leave a big impact even to expert probabilists.Readers from applied sciences will benefit from this book because it presents a very proper foundation of the Monte Carlo method with practical solutions, keeping the technical level no higher than 1st year university calculus.

The emphasis in this book is placed on general models (Markov chains, random fields, random graphs), universal methods (the probabilistic method, the coupling method, the Stein-Chen method, martingale methods, the method of types) and versatile tools (Chernoff's bound, Hoeffding's inequality, Holley's inequality) whose domain of application extends far beyond the present text. Although the examples treated in the book relate to the possible applications, in the communication and computing sciences, in operations research and in physics, this book is in the first instance concerned with theory. The level of the book is that of a beginning graduate course. It is self-contained, the prerequisites consisting merely of basic calculus (series) and basic linear algebra (matrices). The reader is not assumed to be trained in probability since the first chapters give in considerable detail the background necessary to understand the rest of the book.

This book presents the fundamental notions and advanced mathematical tools in the stochastic modeling of uncertainties and their quantification for large-scale computational models in sciences and engineering. In particular, it focuses in parametric uncertainties, and non-parametric uncertainties with applications from the structural dynamics and vibroacoustics of complex mechanical systems, from micromechanics and multiscale mechanics of heterogeneous materials. Resulting from a course developed by the author, the book begins with a description of the fundamental mathematical tools of probability and statistics that are directly useful for uncertainty quantification. It proceeds with a well carried out description of some basic and advanced methods for constructing stochastic models of uncertainties, paying particular attention to the problem of calibrating and identifying a stochastic model of uncertainty when experimental data is available. This book is intended to be a graduate-level textbook for students as well as professionals interested in the theory, computation, and applications of risk and prediction in science and engineering fields.

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 proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Information Technologies and Mathematical Modelling, ITMM 2017, held in Kazan, Russia, in September/October 2017. The 31 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 85 submissions. The conference covers various aspects of mathematical modeling and information technologies, focusing on probabilistic methods and models, queueing theory and communication networks.

This book provides an introduction to elementary probability and to Bayesian statistics using de Finetti's subjectivist approach. One of the features of this approach is that it does not require the introduction of sample space – a non-intrinsic concept that makes the treatment of elementary probability unnecessarily complicate – but introduces as fundamental the concept of random numbers directly related to their interpretation in applications. Events become a particular case of random numbers and probability a particular case of expectation when it is applied to events. The subjective evaluation of expectation and of conditional expectation is based on an economic choice of an acceptable bet or penalty. The properties of expectation and conditional expectation are derived by applying a coherence criterion that the evaluation has to follow. The book is suitable for all introductory courses in probability and statistics for students in Mathematics, Informatics, Engineering, and Physics.

This book demonstrates how nonlinear/non-Gaussian Bayesian time series estimation methods were used to produce a probability distribution of potential MH370 flight paths. It provides details of how the probabilistic models of aircraft flight dynamics, satellite communication system measurements, environmental effects and radar data were constructed and calibrated. The probability distribution was used to define the search zone in the southern Indian Ocean.The book describes particle-filter based numerical calculation of the aircraft flight-path probability distribution and validates the method using data from several of the involved aircraft's previous flights. Finally it is shown how the Reunion Island flaperon debris find affects the search probability distribution.

Taking the Lasso method as its starting point, this book describes the main ingredients needed to study general loss functions and sparsity-inducing regularizers. It also provides a semi-parametric approach to establishing confidence intervals and tests. Sparsity-inducing methods have proven to be very useful in the analysis of high-dimensional data. Examples include the Lasso and group Lasso methods, and the least squares method with other norm-penalties, such as the nuclear norm. The illustrations provided include generalized linear models, density estimation, matrix completion and sparse principal components. Each chapter ends with a problem section. The book can be used as a textbook for a graduate or PhD course.

This graduate-level textbook is primarily aimed at graduate students of statistics, mathematics, science, and engineering who have had an undergraduate course in statistics, an upper division course in analysis, and some acquaintance with measure theoretic probability. It provides a rigorous presentation of the core of mathematical statistics.Part I of this book constitutes a one-semester course on basic parametric mathematical statistics. Part II deals with the large sample theory of statistics - parametric and nonparametric, and its contents may be covered in one semester as well. Part III provides brief accounts of a number of topics of current interest for practitioners and other disciplines whose work involves statistical methods.

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.

The aim of this book is to provide an introduction to probability logic-based formalization of uncertain reasoning. The authors'primary interest is mathematical techniques for infinitary probability logics used to obtain results about proof-theoretical and model-theoretical issues such as axiomatizations, completeness, compactness, and decidability, including solutions of some problems from the literature. An extensive bibliography is provided to point to related work, and this book may serve as a basis for further research projects, as a reference for researchers using probability logic, and also as a textbook for graduate courses in logic.

Now in its second edition, this textbook serves as an introduction to probability and statistics for non-mathematics majors who do not need the exhaustive detail and mathematical depth provided in more comprehensive treatments of the subject. The presentation covers the mathematical laws of random phenomena, including discrete and continuous random variables, expectation and variance, and common probability distributions such as the binomial, Poisson, and normal distributions. More classical examples such as Montmort's problem, the ballot problem, and Bertrand's paradox are now included, along with applications such as the Maxwell-Boltzmann and Bose-Einstein distributions in physics.Key features in new edition:• 35 new exercises• Expanded section on the algebra of sets • Expanded chapters on probabilities to include more classical examples• New section on regression• Online instructors'manual containing solutions to all exercises

This accessible text/reference provides a general introduction to probabilistic graphical models (PGMs) from an engineering perspective. The book covers the fundamentals for each of the main classes of PGMs, including representation, inference and learning principles, and reviews real-world applications for each type of model. These applications are drawn from a broad range of disciplines, highlighting the many uses of Bayesian classifiers, hidden Markov models, Bayesian networks, dynamic and temporal Bayesian networks, Markov random fields, influence diagrams, and Markov decision processes. Features: presents a unified framework encompassing all of the main classes of PGMs; describes the practical application of the different techniques; examines the latest developments in the field, covering multidimensional Bayesian classifiers, relational graphical models and causal models; provides exercises, suggestions for further reading, and ideas for research or programming projects at the end of each chapter.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings fo the 14th International Scientific Conference on Information Technologies and Mathematical Modeling, named after A. F. Terpugov, ITMM 2015, held in Anzhero-Sudzhensk, Russia, in November 2015. The 35 full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 89 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.

Focusing on the mathematics that lies at the intersection of probability theory, statistical physics, combinatorics and computer science, this volume collects together lecture notes on recent developments in the area. The common ground of these subjects is perhaps best described by the three terms in the title: Random Walks, Random Fields and Disordered Systems. The specific topics covered include a study of Branching Brownian Motion from the perspective of disordered (spin-glass) systems, a detailed analysis of weakly self-avoiding random walks in four spatial dimensions via methods of field theory and the renormalization group, a study of phase transitions in disordered discrete structures using a rigorous version of the cavity method, a survey of recent work on interacting polymers in the ballisticity regime and, finally, a treatise on two-dimensional loop-soup models and their connection to conformally invariant systems and the Gaussian Free Field. The notes are aimed at early graduate students with a modest background in probability and mathematical physics, although they could also be enjoyed by seasoned researchers interested in learning about recent advances in the above fields.

When no samples are available to estimate a probability distribution, we have to invite some domain experts to evaluate the belief degree that each event will happen. Perhaps some people think that the belief degree should be modeled by subjective probability or fuzzy set theory. However, it is usually inappropriate because both of them may lead to counterintuitive results in this case.In order to rationally deal with belief degrees, uncertainty theory was founded in 2007 and subsequently studied by many researchers. Nowadays, uncertainty theory has become a branch of axiomatic mathematics for modeling belief degrees.This is an introductory textbook on uncertainty theory, uncertain programming, uncertain statistics, uncertain risk analysis, uncertain reliability analysis, uncertain set, uncertain logic, uncertain inference, uncertain process, uncertain calculus, and uncertain differential equation. This textbook also shows applications of uncertainty theory to scheduling, logistics, networks, data mining, control, and finance.

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.

Anwender, die mit Hilfe statistischer Verfahren experimentell ermittelte Resultate auswerten und grafisch darstellen wollen, finden in diesem Buch ein nützliches Werkzeug. 15 Kernanwendungen aus den Bereichen Physik, Biologie, Chemie, Pharmazie, Medizin, Psychologie, Pharmakologie und Ökonomie sind auch für Mathematica-Einsteiger leicht einzusetzen und eigenen Bedürfnissen anzupassen. Dem Mathematica-Kenner werden eine Reihe statistischer Befehle an die Hand gegeben, mit denen er auch ohne Kenntnisse der Mathematica-Programmierung eigene Auswertungs-Routinen erstellen kann. Darüber hinaus werden grafische Darstellungsformen entwickelt, um komplexe Sachverhalte übersichtlich und publikationsreif zu präsentieren. Eine CD-ROM mit Anwendungstools liegt bei.

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.

Non-uniform random variate generation is an established research area in the intersection of mathematics, statistics and computer science. Although random variate generation with popular standard distributions have become part of every course on discrete event simulation and on Monte Carlo methods, the recent concept of universal (also called automatic or black-box) random variate generation can only be found dispersed in literature. This new concept has great practical advantages that are little known to most simulation practitioners. Being unique in its overall organization the book covers not only the mathematical and statistical theory, but also deals with the implementation of such methods. All algorithms introduced in the book are designed for practical use in simulation and have been coded and made available by the authors. Examples of possible applications of the presented algorithms (including option pricing, VaR and Bayesian statistics) are presented at the end of the book.

Leave nothing to chance. This cliche embodies the common belief that ran­ domness has no place in carefully planned methodologies, every step should be spelled out, each i dotted and each t crossed. In discrete mathematics at least, nothing could be further from the truth. Introducing random choices into algorithms can improve their performance. The application of proba­ bilistic tools has led to the resolution of combinatorial problems which had resisted attack for decades. The chapters in this volume explore and celebrate this fact. Our intention was to bring together, for the first time, accessible discus­ sions of the disparate ways in which probabilistic ideas are enriching discrete mathematics. These discussions are aimed at mathematicians with a good combinatorial background but require only a passing acquaintance with the basic definitions in probability (e.g. expected value, conditional probability). A reader who already has a firm grasp on the area will be interested in the original research, novel syntheses, and discussions of ongoing developments scattered throughout the book. Some of the most convincing demonstrations of the power of these tech­ niques are randomized algorithms for estimating quantities which are hard to compute exactly. One example is the randomized algorithm of Dyer, Frieze and Kannan for estimating the volume of a polyhedron. To illustrate these techniques, we consider a simple related problem. Suppose S is some region of the unit square defined by a system of polynomial inequalities: Pi (x. y) ~ o.

You can start by putting the DO NOT DISTURB sign. Cay, in Desert Hearts (1985). The interplay between randomness and computation is one of the most fas­ cinating scientific phenomena uncovered in the last couple of decades. This interplay is at the heart of modern cryptography and plays a fundamental role in complexity theory at large. Specifically, the interplay of randomness and computation is pivotal to several intriguing notions of probabilistic proof systems and is the focal of the computational approach to randomness. This book provides an introduction to these three, somewhat interwoven domains (i.e., cryptography, proofs and randomness). Modern Cryptography. Whereas classical cryptography was confined to the art of designing and breaking encryption schemes (or'secrecy codes'), Modern Cryptography is concerned with the rigorous analysis of any system which should withstand malicious attempts to abuse it. We emphasize two aspects of the transition from classical to modern cryptography: ( 1) the wide­ ning of scope from one specific task to an utmost wide general class of tasks; and (2) the move from an engineering-art which strives on ad-hoc tricks to a scientific discipline based on rigorous approaches and techniques.

Over the past decade, many major advances have been made in the field of graph colouring via the probabilistic method. This monograph provides an accessible and unified treatment of these results, using tools such as the Lovasz Local Lemma and Talagrand's concentration inequality.The topics covered include: Kahn's proofs that the Goldberg-Seymour and List Colouring Conjectures hold asymptotically; a proof that for some absolute constant C, every graph of maximum degree Delta has a Delta+C total colouring; Johansson's proof that a triangle free graph has a O(Delta over log Delta) colouring; algorithmic variants of the Local Lemma which permit the efficient construction of many optimal and near-optimal colourings.This begins with a gentle introduction to the probabilistic method and will be useful to researchers and graduate students in graph theory, discrete mathematics, theoretical computer science and probability.

Semi-infinite programming (SIP) deals with optimization problems in which either the number of decision variables or the number of constraints is finite. This book presents the state of the art in SIP in a suggestive way, bringing the powerful SIP tools close to the potential users in different scientific and technological fields. The volume is divided into four parts. Part I reviews the first decade of SIP (1962-1972). Part II analyses convex and generalised SIP, conic linear programming, and disjunctive programming. New numerical methods for linear, convex, and continuously differentiable SIP problems are proposed in Part III. Finally, Part IV provides an overview of the applications of SIP to probability, statistics, experimental design, robotics, optimization under uncertainty, production games, and separation problems. Audience: This book is an indispensable reference and source for advanced students and researchers in applied mathematics and engineering.

Asymptotic methods are of great importance for practical applications, especially in dealing with boundary value problems for small stochastic perturbations. This book deals with nonlinear dynamical systems perturbed by noise. It addresses problems in which noise leads to qualitative changes, escape from the attraction domain, or extinction in population dynamics. The most likely exit point and expected escape time are determined with singular perturbation methods for the corresponding Fokker-Planck equation. The authors indicate how their techniques relate to the Itô calculus applied to the Langevin equation. The book will be useful to researchers and graduate students.