Overview

This book brings together the personal accounts and reflections of nineteen mathematical model-builders, whose specialty is probabilistic modelling. The reader may well wonder why, apart from personal interest, one should commission and edit such a collection of articles. There are, of course, many reasons, but perhaps the three most relevant are: (i) a philosophicaJ interest in conceptual models; this is an interest shared by everyone who has ever puzzled over the relationship between thought and reality; (ii) a conviction, not unsupported by empirical evidence, that probabilistic modelling has an important contribution to make to scientific research; and finally (iii) a curiosity, historical in its nature, about the complex interplay between personal events and the development of a field of mathematical research, namely applied probability. Let me discuss each of these in turn. Philosophical Abstraction, the formation of concepts, and the construction of conceptual models present us with complex philosophical problems which date back to Democritus, Plato and Aristotle. We have all, at one time or another, wondered just how we think; are our thoughts, concepts and models of reality approxim&tions to the truth, or are they simply functional constructs helping us to master our environment? Nowhere are these problems more apparent than in mathematical model­ ling, where idealized concepts and constructions replace the imperfect realities for which they stand.

Full Product Details

Author:   J. Gani ,  N.T.J. Bailey ,  J.W. Cohen ,  W.J. Ewens
Publisher:   Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
Imprint:   Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
Edition:   Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1986
Volume:   1
Dimensions:   Width: 15.50cm , Height: 1.70cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.505kg
ISBN:  

9781461386339

ISBN 10:   1461386330
Pages:   313
Publication Date:   18 October 2011
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

1 Early Craftsmen.- Crafty Modelling.- Looking at Life Quantitatively.- Remembrance of Things Past.- A Boy from the Bush.- 2 The Craft Organized.- An Improbable Path.- Some Samples of Modelling.- Markovian Models—An Essay.- Probability Modelling Across the Continents.- Chance or Determinism?.- Diffusion Models of Population Genetics in the Age of Molecular Biology.- Return of the Wanderer: a Physicist Becomes a Probabilist.- In the Late Afternoon.- The Making of a Queueing Theorist.- 3 The Craft in Development.- An Algorithmic Probabilist’s Apology.- Probability, Earthquakes and Travel Abroad.- From Information Theory to Quantum Mechanics.- From Real Analysis to Probability: Autobiographical Notes.- The Path to the Genetics Sampling Formula.- In and Out of Applied Probability in Australia.

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