The goal of this book is to present Stochastic Calculus at an introductory level and not at its maximum mathematical detail. The author aims to capture as much as possible the spirit of elementary deterministic Calculus, at which students have been already exposed. This assumes a presentation that mimics similar properties of deterministic Calculus, which facilitates understanding of more complicated topics of Stochastic Calculus. Contents:A Few Introductory ProblemsBasic NotionsUseful Stochastic ProcessesProperties of Stochastic ProcessesStochastic IntegrationStochastic DifferentiationStochastic Integration TechniquesStochastic Differential EquationsApplications of Brownian MotionGirsanov's Theorem and Brownian MotionSome Applications of Stochastic CalculusHints and Solutions Readership: Undergraduate and graduate students interested in stochastic processes. Key Features:The book contains numerous problems with full solutions and plenty of worked out examples and figures, which facilitate material understandingThe material was tested on students at several universities around the world (Taiwan, Kuwait, USA); this led to a presentation form that balances both technicality and understandingThe presentation mimics as close as possible the same chapters as in deterministic calculus; former calculus students will find this chronology of ideas familiar to CalculusKeywords:Stochastic Processes;Probability Distribution;Brownian Motion;Filtering Theory;Martingale;Ito Calculus;Poisson Process;Bessel Process
Most branches of science involving random fluctuations can be approached by Stochastic Calculus. These include, but are not limited to, signal processing, noise filtering, stochastic control, optimal stopping, electrical circuits, financial markets, molecular chemistry, population dynamics, etc. All these applications assume a strong mathematical background, which in general takes a long time to develop. Stochastic Calculus is not an easy to grasp theory, and in general, requires acquaintance with the probability, analysis and measure theory.The goal of this book is to present Stochastic Calculus at an introductory level and not at its maximum mathematical detail. The author's goal was to capture as much as possible the spirit of elementary deterministic Calculus, at which students have been already exposed. This assumes a presentation that mimics similar properties of deterministic Calculus, which facilitates understanding of more complicated topics of Stochastic Calculus.The second edition contains several new features that improved the first edition both qualitatively and quantitatively. First, two more chapters have been added, Chapter 12 and Chapter 13, dealing with applications of stochastic processes in Electrochemistry and global optimization methods.This edition contains also a final chapter material containing fully solved review problems and provides solutions, or at least valuable hints, to all proposed problems. The present edition contains a total of about 250 exercises.This edition has also improved presentation from the first edition in several chapters, including new material.
This book presents a concise treatment of stochastic calculus and its applications. It gives a simple but rigorous treatment of the subject including a range of advanced topics, it is useful for practitioners who use advanced theoretical results. It covers advanced applications, such as models in mathematical finance, biology and engineering.Self-contained and unified in presentation, the book contains many solved examples and exercises. It may be used as a textbook by advanced undergraduates and graduate students in stochastic calculus and financial mathematics. It is also suitable for practitioners who wish to gain an understanding or working knowledge of the subject. For mathematicians, this book could be a first text on stochastic calculus; it is good companion to more advanced texts by a way of examples and exercises. For people from other fields, it provides a way to gain a working knowledge of stochastic calculus. It shows all readers the applications of stochastic calculus methods and takes readers to the technical level required in research and sophisticated modelling.This second edition contains a new chapter on bonds, interest rates and their options. New materials include more worked out examples in all chapters, best estimators, more results on change of time, change of measure, random measures, new results on exotic options, FX options, stochastic and implied volatility, models of the age-dependent branching process and the stochastic Lotka-Volterra model in biology, non-linear filtering in engineering and five new figures.Instructors can obtain slides of the text from the author.
This concise, informal introduction to stochastic processes evolving with time was designed to meet the needs of graduate students not only in mathematics and statistics, but in the many fields in which the concepts presented are important, including computer science, economics, business, biological science, psychology, and engineering. With emphasis on fundamental mathematical ideas rather than proofs or detailed applications, the treatment introduces the following topics: Markov chains, with focus on the relationship between the convergence to equilibrium and the size of the eigenvalues of the stochastic matrix Infinite state space, including the ideas of transience, null recurrence and positive recurrence The three main types of continual time Markov chains and optimal stopping of Markov chains Martingales, including conditional expectation, the optional sampling theorem, and the martingale convergence theorem Renewal process and reversible Markov chains Brownian motion, both multidimensional and one-dimensional Introduction to Stochastic Processes is ideal for a first course in stochastic processes without measure theory, requiring only a calculus-based undergraduate probability course and a course in linear algebra.
This book is in two volumes, and is intended as a text for introductory courses in probability and statistics at the second or third year university level. It em phasizes applications and logical principles rather than mathematical theory. A good background in freshman calculus is sufficient for most of the material presented. Several starred sections have been included as supplementary material. Nearly 900 problems and exercises of varying difficulty are given, and Appendix A contains answers to about one-third of them. The first volume (Chapters 1-8) deals with probability models and with math ematical methods for describing and manipulating them. It is similar in content and organization to the 1979 edition. Some sections have been rewritten and expanded-for example, the discussions of independent random variables and conditional probability. Many new exercises have been added. In the second volume (Chapters 9-16), probability models are used as the basis for the analysis and interpretation of data. This material has been revised extensively. Chapters 9 and 10 describe the use of the likelihood function in estimation problems, as in the 1979 edition. Chapter 11 then discusses frequency properties of estimation procedures, and introduces coverage probability and confidence intervals. Chapter 12 describes tests of significance, with applications primarily to frequency data. The likelihood ratio statistic is used to unify the material on testing, and connect it with earlier material on estimation.
It was about ninety years ago that GALTON and WATSON, in treating the problem of the extinction of family names, showed how probability theory could be applied to study the effects of chance on the development of families or populations. They formulated a mathematical model, which was neglected for many years after their original work, but was studied again in isolated papers in the twenties and thirties of this century. During the past fifteen or twenty years, the model and its general izations have been treated extensively, for their mathematical interest and as a theoretical basis for studies of populations of such objects as genes, neutrons, or cosmic rays. The generalizations of the GaIton Wa,tson model to be studied in this book can appropriately be called branching processes; the term has become common since its use in a more restricted sense in a paper by KOLMOGOROV and DMITRIEV in 1947 (see Chapter II). We may think of a branching process as a mathematical representation of the development of a population whose members reproduce and die, subject to laws of chance. The objects may be of different types, depending on their age, energy, position, or other factors. However, they must not interfere with one another. This assump tion, which unifies the mathematical theory, seems justified for some populations of physical particles such as neutrons or cosmic rays, but only under very restricted circumstances for biological populations.
