Probability Via Expectation

ISBN-13: 9781461267959 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 353 str.

Peter Whittle

Opis

The third edition of 1992 constituted a major reworking of the original text, and the preface to that edition still represents my position on the issues that stimulated me first to write. The present edition contains a number of minor modifications and corrections, but its principal innovation is the addition of material on dynamic programming, optimal allocation, option pricing and large deviations. These are substantial topics, but ones into which one can gain an insight with less labour than is generally thought. They all involve the expectation concept in an essential fashion, even the treatment of option pricing, which seems initially to forswear expectation in favour of an arbitrage criterion. I am grateful to readers and to Springer-Verlag for their continuing interest in the approach taken in this work. Peter Whittle Preface to the Third Edition This book is a complete revision of the earlier work Probability which appeared in 1970. While revised so radically and incorporating so much new material as to amount to a new text, it preserves both the aim and the approach of the original. That aim was stated as the provision of a 'first text in probability, demanding a reasonable but not extensive knowledge of mathematics, and taking the reader to what one might describe as a good intermediate level' . In doing so it attempted to break away from stereotyped applications, and consider applications of a more novel and significant character.

Recenzje

"This surprising and beautiful introduction to concepts of probability ... chapters have been added which deal with areas of big actual interest ... ." (Peter Imkeller, zbMATH 0980.60004, 2022)

From the reviews of the fourth edition:

"... a clear success in its unorthodoxy, Probability via Expectation has become a treasured classic."
P.A.L. Emrechts in "Short Book Reviews", Vol. 21/1, April, 2001

"Apart from presenting a case for the development of probability theory by using the expectation operator rather than probability measure as the primitive notion, a second distinctive feature of this book is the very large range of modern applications that it covers. Many of these are addressed by more than 350 exercises interspersed throughout the text. In summary, this well written book is a ... introduction to probability theory and its applications." (Norbert Henze, Metrika, November, 2002)

"Originally published in 1970, this book has stood the test of time. ... the text demonstrates a modern alternative approach to a now classical field. ... The fourth edition contains a number of modifications and corrections. New material on dynamic programming, optimal allocation, options pricing and large deviations is included." (Martin T. Wells, Journal of the American Statistical Association, September 2001)

Spis treści

1 Uncertainty, Intuition, and Expectation.- 1 Ideas and Examples.- 2 The Empirical Basis.- 3 Averages over a Finite Population.- 4 Repeated Sampling: Expectation.- 5 More on Sample Spaces and Variables.- 6 Ideal and Actual Experiments: Observables.- 2 Expectation.- 1 Random Variables.- 2 Axioms for the Expectation Operator.- 3 Events: Probability.- 4 Some Examples of an Expectation.- 5 Moments.- 6 Applications: Optimization Problems.- 7 Equiprobable Outcomes: Sample Surveys.- 8 Applications: Least Square Estimation of Random Variables.- 9 Some Implications of the Axioms.- 3 Probability.- 1 Events, Sets and Indicators.- 2 Probability Measure.- 3 Expectation as a Probability Integral.- 4 Some History.- 5 Subjective Probability.- 4 Some Basic Models.- 1 A Model of Spatial Distribution.- 2 The Multinomial, Binomial, Poisson and Geometric Distributions.- 3 Independence.- 4 Probability Generating Functions.- 5 The St. Petersburg Paradox.- 6 Matching, and Other Combinatorial Problems.- 7 Conditioning.- 8 Variables on the Continuum: The Exponential and Gamma Distributions.- 5 Conditioning.- 1 Conditional Expectation.- 2 Conditional Probability.- 3 A Conditional Expectation as a Random Variable.- 4 Conditioning on a ? Field.- 5 Independence.- 6 Statistical Decision Theory.- 7 Information Transmission.- 8 Acceptance Sampling.- 6 Applications of the Independence Concept.- 1 Renewal Processes.- 2 Recurrent Events: Regeneration Points.- 3 A Result in Statistical Mechanics: The Gibbs Distribution.- 4 Branching Processes.- 7 The Two Basic Limit Theorems.- 1 Convergence in Distribution (Weak Convergence).- 2 Properties of the Characteristic Function.- 3 The Law of Large Numbers.- 4 Normal Convergence (the Central Limit Theorem).- 5 The Normal Distribution.- 6 The Law of Large Numbers and the Evaluation of Channel Capacity.- 8 Continuous Random Variables and Their Transformations.- 1 Distributions with a Density.- 2 Functions of Random Variables.- 3 Conditional Densities.- 9 Markov Processes in Discrete Time.- 1 Stochastic Processes and the Markov Property.- 2 The Case of a Discrete State Space: The Kolmogorov Equations.- 3 Some Examples: Ruin, Survival and Runs.- 4 Birth and Death Processes: Detailed Balance.- 5 Some Examples We Should Like to Defer.- 6 Random Walks, Random Stopping and Ruin.- 7 Auguries of Martingales.- 8 Recurrence and Equilibrium.- 9 Recurrence and Dimension.- 10 Markov Processes in Continuous Time.- 1 The Markov Property in Continuous Time.- 2 The Case of a Discrete State Space.- 3 The Poisson Process.- 4 Birth and Death Processes.- 5 Processes on Nondiscrete State Spaces.- 6 The Filing Problem.- 7 Some Continuous-Time Martingales.- 8 Stationarity and Reversibility.- 9 The Ehrenfest Model.- 10 Processes of Independent Increments.- 11 Brownian Motion: Diffusion Processes.- 12 First Passage and Recurrence for Brownian Motion.- 11 Action Optimisation; Dynamic Programming.- 1 Action Optimisation.- 2 Optimisation over Time: the Dynamic Programming Equation.- 3 State Structure.- 4 Optimal Control Under LQG Assumptions.- 5 Minimal-Length Coding.- 6 Discounting.- 7 Continuous-Time Versions and Infinite-Horizon Limits.- 8 Policy Improvement.- 12 Optimal Resource Allocation.- 1 Portfolio Selection in Discrete Time.- 2 Portfolio Selection in Continuous Time.- 3 Multi-Armed Bandits and the Gittins Index.- 4 Open Processes.- 5 Tax Problems.- 13 Finance: ‘Risk-Free’ Trading and Option Pricing.- 1 Options and Hedging Strategies.- 2 Optimal Targeting of the Contract.- 3 An Example.- 4 A Continuous-Time Model.- 5 How Should it Be Done?.- 14 Second-Order Theory.- 1 Back to L2.- 2 Linear Least Square Approximation.- 3 Projection: Innovation.- 4 The Gauss-Markov Theorem.- 5 The Convergence of Linear Least Square Estimates.- 6 Direct and Mutual Mean Square Convergence.- 7 Conditional Expectations as Least Square Estimates: Martingale Convergence.- 15 Consistency and Extension: The Finite-Dimensional Case.- 1 The Issues.- 2 Convex Sets.- 3 The Consistency Condition for Expectation Values.- 4 The Extension of Expectation Values.- 5 Examples of Extension.- 6 Dependence Information: Chernoff Bounds.- 16 Stochastic Convergence.- 1 The Characterization of Convergence.- 2 Types of Convergence.- 3 Some Consequences.- 4 Convergence in rth Mean.- 17 Martingales.- 1 The Martingale Property.- 2 Kolmogorov’s Inequality: the Law of Large Numbers.- 3 Martingale Convergence: Applications.- 4 The Optional Stopping Theorem.- 5 Examples of Stopped Martingales.- 18 Large-Deviation Theory.- 1 The Large-Deviation Property.- 2 Some Preliminaries.- 3 Cramer’s Theorem.- 4 Some Special Cases.- 5 Circuit-Switched Networks and Boltzmarm Statistics.- 6 Multi-Class Traffic and Effective Bandwidth.- 7 Birth and Death Processes.- 19 Extension: Examples of the Infinite-Dimensional Case.- 1 Generalities on the Infinite-Dimensional Case.- 2 Fields and ?-Fields of Events.- 3 Extension on a Linear Lattice.- 4 Integrable Functions of a Scalar Random Variable.- 5 Expectations Derivable from the Characteristic Function: Weak Convergence324.- 20 Quantum Mechanics.- 1 The Static Case.- 2 The Dynamic Case.- References.