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Probability theory has diverse applications in a plethora of fields, including physics, engineering, computer science, chemistry, biology and economics. This book will familiarize students with various applications of probability theory, stochastic modeling and random processes, using examples from all these disciplines and more. The reader learns via case studies and begins to recognize the sort of problems that are best tackled probabilistically. The emphasis is on conceptual understanding, the development of intuition and gaining insight, keeping technicalities to a minimum. Nevertheless, a glimpse into the depth of the topics is provided, preparing students for more specialized texts while assuming only an undergraduate-level background in mathematics. The wide range of areas covered - never before discussed together in a unified fashion – includes Markov processes and random walks, Langevin and Fokker–Planck equations, noise, generalized central limit theorem and extreme values statistics, random matrix theory and percolation theory.
The population dynamics for the replicator equation has been well studied in continuous time, but there is less work that explicitly considers the evolution in discrete time. The discrete-time dynamics can often be justified indirectly by establishing the relevant evolutionary dynamics for the corresponding continuous-time system, and then appealing to an appropriate approximation property. In this paper we study the discrete-time system directly, and establish basic stability results for the evolution of a population defined by a positive definite system matrix, where the population is disrupted by random perturbations to the genotype distribution either through migration or mutation, in each successive generation.
Rumours have become part of our daily lives, and their spread has a negative impact on a variety of human affairs. Therefore, how to control the spread of rumours is an important topic. In this paper, we extend the classic Maki–Thompson model from a deterministic framework to a stochastic framework with a forgetting mechanism, because real-world person-to-person communications are inevitably affected by random factors. By constructing suitable stochastic Lyapunov functions, we show that the asymptotic behaviour of the stochastic rumour model is governed by the basic reproductive number. If this number is less than one, then the solution of the stochastic rumour model oscillates around the rumour-free equilibrium under extra mild conditions, indicating the extinction of the rumour with a probability of one. Otherwise, the solution always fluctuates around the endemic equilibrium under certain parametric restrictions, implying that the rumour will continually persist. In addition, we discuss a possible intervention strategy that stops the spread of rumours by strengthening the intensity of white noise, which is very different from the deterministic rumour model without white noise. Also, numerical simulations are conducted to support our analytical results.
The discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method provides a robust and flexible technique for the time integration of fractional diffusion problems. However, a practical implementation uses coefficients defined by integrals that are not easily evaluated. We describe specialized quadrature techniques that efficiently maintain the overall accuracy of the DG method. In addition, we observe in numerical experiments that known superconvergence properties of DG time stepping for classical diffusion problems carry over in a modified form to the fractional-order setting.
This paper investigates asset-liability management problems in a continuous-time economy. When the financial market consists of cointegrated risky assets, institutional investors attempt to make profit from the cointegration feature on the one hand, while on the other hand they need to maintain a stable surplus level, that is, the company’s wealth less its liability. Challenges occur when the liability is random and cannot be fully financed or hedged through the financial market. For mean–variance investors, an additional concern is the rational time-consistency issue, which ensures that a decision made in the future will not be restricted by the current surplus level. By putting all these factors together, this paper derives a closed-form feedback equilibrium control for time-consistent mean–variance asset-liability management problems with cointegrated risky assets. The solution is built upon the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman framework addressing time inconsistency.
This is a companion book to Asymptotic Analysis of Random Walks: Heavy-Tailed Distributions by A.A. Borovkov and K.A. Borovkov. Its self-contained systematic exposition provides a highly useful resource for academic researchers and professionals interested in applications of probability in statistics, ruin theory, and queuing theory. The large deviation principle for random walks was first established by the author in 1967, under the restrictive condition that the distribution tails decay faster than exponentially. (A close assertion was proved by S.R.S. Varadhan in 1966, but only in a rather special case.) Since then, the principle has always been treated in the literature only under this condition. Recently, the author jointly with A.A. Mogul'skii removed this restriction, finding a natural metric for which the large deviation principle for random walks holds without any conditions. This new version is presented in the book, as well as a new approach to studying large deviations in boundary crossing problems. Many results presented in the book, obtained by the author himself or jointly with co-authors, are appearing in a monograph for the first time.
Is college worth the cost? Should I worry about arsenic in my rice? Can we recycle pollution? Real questions of personal finance, public health, and social policy require sober, data-driven analyses. This unique text provides students with the tools of quantitative reasoning to answer such questions. The text models how to clarify the question, recognize and avoid bias, isolate relevant factors, gather data, and construct numerical analyses for interpretation. Themes and techniques are repeated across chapters, with a progression in mathematical sophistication over the course of the book, which helps the student get comfortable with the process of thinking in numbers. This textbook includes references to source materials and suggested further reading, making it user-friendly for motivated undergraduate students. The many detailed problems and worked solutions in the text and extensive appendices help the reader learn mathematical areas such as algebra, functions, graphs, and probability. End-of-chapter problem material provides practice for students, and suggested projects are provided with each chapter. A solutions manual is available online for instructors.