Developed after a meeting at the Santa Fe Institute on extinction modeling, this book comments critically on the various modeling approaches. In the last decade or so, scientists have started to examine a new approach to the patterns of evolution and extinction in the fossil record. This approach may be called "statistical paleontology," since it looks at large-scale patterns in the record and attempts to understand and model their average statistical features, rather than their detailed structure. Examples of the patterns these studies examine are the distribution of the sizes of mass...

This book provides an introduction to Monte Carlo simulations in classical statistical physics and is aimed both at students beginning work in the field and at more experienced researchers who wish to learn more about Monte Carlo methods. It includes methods for both equilibrium and out of equilibrium systems, and discusses in detail such common algorithms as the Metropolis and heat-bath algorithms, as well as more sophisticated ones such as continuous time Monte Carlo, cluster algorithms, multigrid methods, entropic sampling and simulated tempering. Data analysis techniques are also...