Dipak Dey, University of Connecticut, USA
C.R. Rao, Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA

Bayesian Thinking, Modeling and Computation
HANDBOOK OF STATISTICS, 25

Description

This volume describes how to develop Bayesian thinking, modelling and computation both from philosophical, methodological and application point of view. It further describes parametric and nonparametric Bayesian methods for modelling and how to use modern computational methods to summarize inferences using simulation. The book covers wide range of topics including objective and subjective Bayesian inferences with a variety of applications in modelling categorical, survival, spatial, spatiotemporal, Epidemiological, software reliability, small area and micro array data. The book concludes with a chapter on how to teach Bayesian thoughts to nonstatisticians.

Contents

Preface Contributors 1. Bayesian Inference for Casual Effects (Donald B. Rubin) 2. Reference Analysis (Jose M. Bernardo) 3. Probability Matching Priors (Gauri Sankar Datta and Trevor J. Sweeting) 4. Model Selection and Hypothesis Testing Based on Objective Probabilities and Bayes Factors (Luis Raul Pericchi) 5. Role of P-values and other measures of evidence in Bayesian Analysis (Jayanta Ghosh, Sumitra Purkayastha and Tapas Samanta) 6. Bayesian Model Checking and Model Diagnostics (Hal S. Stern and Sandip Sinharay) 7. The Elimination of Nuisance Parameters (Brunero Liseo) 8. Bayesian Estimation of Multivariate Location Parameters (Ann Cohen Brandwein and William E. Strawdermann) 9. Bayesian Nonparametric Modeling and Data Analysis: An Introduction (Timothy E. Hanson, Adam J. Branscum and Wesley O. Johnson) 10. Some Bayesian Nonparametric Models (Paul Damien) 11. Bayesian Modeling in the Wavelet Domain (Fabrizio Ruggeri and Brani Vidakovic) 12. Bayesian Nonparametric Inference (Stephen Walker) 13. Bayesian Methods for Function Estimation (Nidhan Choudhuri, Subhashis Ghosal and Anindya Roy) 14. MCMC Methods to Estimate Bayesian Parametric Models (Antonietta Mira) 15. Bayesian Computation: From Posterior Densities to Bayes Factors, Marginal Likelihoods, and Posterior Model Probabilities (Ming-Hui Chen) 16. Bayesian Modelling and Inference on Mixtures of Distributions (Jean-Michel Marin, Kerrie Mengersen and Christian P. Robert) 17. Simulation Based Optimal Design (Peter Muller) 18. Variable Selection and Covariance Selection in Multivariate Regression Models (Edward Cripps, Chris Carter and Robert Kohn) 19. Dynamic Models (Helio S. Mignon, Dani Gamerman, Hedibert F. Lopes and Marco A.R. Ferreira) 20. Bayesian Thinking in Spatial Statistics (Lance A. Waller) 21. Robust Bayesian Analysis (Fabrizio Ruggeri, David Rios Insua and Jacinto Martin) 22. Elliptical Measurement Error Models - A Bayesian Approach (Heleno Bolfarine and R.B. Arellano-Valle) 23. Bayesian Sensitivity Analysis in Skew-elliptical Models (Ignacio Vidal, Pilar Iglesias and Marcia Branco) 24. Bayesian Methods for DNA Microarray Data Analysis (Veerabhadran Baladandyuthapani, Shubhankar Ray and Bani Mallick) 25. Bayesian Biostatistics (David B. Dunson) 26. Innovative Bayesian Methods for Biostatistics and Epidemiology (Paul Gustafson, Shahadut Hossain and Lawrence McCandless) 27. Bayesian Analysis of Case-Control Studies (Bhramar Mukherjee, Samiran Sinha and Malay Ghosh) 28. Bayesian Analysis of ROC Data (Valen E. Johnson and Timothy D. Johnson) 29. Modeling and Analysis for Categorical Response Data (Siddhartha Chib) 30. Bayesian Methods and Simulation-Based Computation for Contingency Tables (James H. Albert) 31. Multiple Events Time Data: A Bayesian Recourse (Debajyoti Sinha and Sujit K. Ghosh) 32. Bayesian Survival Analysis for Discrete Data with Left-Truncation and Interval Censoring (Chong Z. He and Dongchu Sun) 33. Software Reliability (Lynn Kuo) 34. Bayesian Aspects of Small Area Estimation (Tapabrata Maiti) 35. Teaching Bayesian Thought to Nonstatisticians (Dalene K. Stangl) Colour Figures Subject Index Contents of Previous Volumes

Hardbound, ISBN: 0-444-51539-9, 1062 pages, publication date: 2005


Alberto A. Martinez

Negative Math:
How Mathematical Rules Can Be Positively Bent

Cloth | 2005 | ISBN: 0-691-12309-8
280 pp. | 6 x 9 | 32 line illus.

A student in class asks the math teacher: "Shouldn't minus times minus make minus?" Teachers soon convince most students that it does not. Yet the innocent question brings with it a germ of mathematical creativity. What happens if we encourage that thought, odd and ungrounded though it may seem?

Few books in the field of mathematics encourage such creative thinking. Fewer still are engagingly written and fun to read. This book succeeds on both counts. Alberto Martinez shows us how many of the mathematical concepts that we take for granted were once considered contrived, imaginary, absurd, or just plain wrong. Even today, he writes, not all parts of math correspond to things, relations, or operations that we can actually observe or carry out in everyday life.

Negative Math ponders such issues by exploring controversies in the history of numbers, especially the so-called negative and "impossible" numbers. It uses history, puzzles, and lively debates to demonstrate how it is still possible to devise new artificial systems of mathematical rules. In fact, the book contends, departures from traditional rules can even be the basis for new applications. For example, by using an algebra in which minus times minus makes minus, mathematicians can describe curves or trajectories that are not represented by traditional coordinate geometry.

Clear and accessible, Negative Math expects from its readers only a passing acquaintance with basic high school algebra. It will prove pleasurable reading not only for those who enjoy popular math, but also for historians, philosophers, and educators.

Table of Contents:

Figures ix
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Chapter 2: The Problem 10
Chapter 3: History: Much Ado About Less than Nothing 18
The Search for Evident Meaning 36
Chapter 4: History: Meaningful and Meaningless Expressions 43
Impossible Numbers? 66
Chapter 5: History: Making Radically New Mathematics 80
From Hindsight to Creativity 104
Chapter 6: Math Is Rather Flexible 110
Sometimes -1 Is Greater than Zero 112
Traditional Complications 115
Can Minus Times Minus Be Minus? 131
Unity in Mathematics 166
Chapter 7: Making a Meaningful Math 174
Finding Meaning 175
Designing Numbers and Operations 186
Physical Mathematics? 220
Notes 235
Further Reading 249
Acknowledgments 259
Index 261

Giga, Yoshikazu

Surface Evolution Equations
A Level Set Approach

Series: Monographs in Mathematics, Vol. 99
2006, XII, 264 p., Hardcover
ISBN: 3-7643-2430-9

About this book

This book presents a self-contained introduction to the analytic foundation of a level set method for various surface evolution equations including curvature flow equations. These equations are important for many fields of applications, such as material sciences, image processing and differential geometry. The goal is to introduce a generalized notion of solutions allowing singularities, and to solve the initial-value problem globally-in-time in a generalized sense. Various equivalent definitions of solutions are studied. Several new results on equivalence are also presented. Further, a rather complete introduction to the theory of viscosity solutions is contained, which is a key tool for the level set method.

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Cohen, Ralph L., Hess, Kathryn, Voronov, Alexander A.

String Topology and Cyclic Homology

Series: Advanced Courses in Mathematics - CRM Barcelona
2006, VI, 163 p., Softcover
ISBN: 3-7643-2182-2

About this textbook

Free loop spaces play a central role in both string topology and topological cyclic
homology, a topological version of Connes' cyclic homology.
The first part focuses on string topology and discusses the loop product from different
points of view. The second part is devoted to the construction of algebraic models for computing topological cyclic homology and starts with the study of free loop spaces.

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