Bifurcation theory has made a very fast upswing in the last fifteen years. Roughly speaking it generalises to dynamic systems the pos sibility of mUltiple solutions, a possibility already recognised in static systems - physical, chemical, social - when operating far from their equilibrium states. It so happened that quite a few staff members of the Erasmus University Rotterdam were thinking along those lines about certain aspects of their disciplines. To have a number of specialists and potential "fans" convene to discuss various aspects of bifurcation al thinking, seemed a natural...

Approach your problems from the right end It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is and begin with the answers. Then one day, that they can't see the problem. perhaps you will find the final question. O. K. Chesterton. The Scandal of Father 'The Hermit Qad in Crane Feathers' in R. Brown 'The point of a Pin'. van Gu!ik's The Chinese Maze Murders. Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host of monographs and textbooks on increasingly specialized topics. However, the "tree" of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow only by putting forth new branches....

In the last five years or so there has been an important renaissance in the area of (mathematical) modeling, identification and (stochastic) control. It was the purpose of the Advanced Study Institute of which the present volume constitutes the proceedings to review recent developments in this area with par- ticular emphasis on identification and filtering and to do so in such a manner that the material is accessible to a wide variety of both embryo scientists and the various breeds of established researchers to whom identification, filtering, etc. are important (such as control engineers,...

This volume is a result of a meeting which took place in June 1986 at 'll Ciocco" in Italy entitled 'Deformation theory of algebras and structures and applications'. It appears somewhat later than is perhaps desirable for a volume resulting from a summer school. In return it contains a good many results which were not yet available at the time of the meeting. In particular it is now abundantly clear that the Deformation theory of algebras is indeed central to the whole philosophy of deformations/perturbations/stability. This is one of the main results of the 254 page paper below (practically...

This book contains the Proceedings of a symposium that was held in Rotterdam from 12 to 15 January 1982 to celebrate the 25-th anniversary of the Econometric Institute of the Erasmus University. The subject of the symposium, developments in econometrics and related fields, was particularly appropriate for the occasion. In 25 years the research carried out at the Econometric Institute developed from the original seminal work in econometrics, carried out under the supervision of the first director H. Theil, to embrace related areas such as mathematical economics, operations research, systems...