A First Course in Stochastic Processes, Second Edition by Samuel Karlin

Product Description

The purpose, level, and style of this new edition conform to the tenets set forth in the original preface. The authors continue with their tack of developing simultaneously theory and applications, intertwined so that they refurbish and elucidate each other.
The authors have made three main kinds of changes. First, they have enlarged on the topics treated in the first edition. Second, they have added many exercises and problems at the end of each chapter. Third, and most important, they have supplied, in new chapters, broad introductory discussions of several classes of stochastic processes not dealt with in the first edition, notably martingales, renewal and fluctuation phenomena associated with random sums, stationary stochastic processes, and diffusion theory.
Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #192926 in Books
Published on: 1975-03-28
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
557 pages
Editorial Reviews

About the Author
Howard E. Taylor is a research chemist with the National Research Program, Water Resources Division, U.S. Geological Survey located in Boulder, Colorado. Dr. Taylor has played a major role over the past 25 years in the development of plasma spectrometric techniques in analytical chemistry, as reflected in his more than 150 technical publications and the presentation of numerous papers at national and international technical meetings. He has served as faculty affiliate at Colorado State University and has taught American Chemical Society Short Courses for more than 15 years.
Customer Reviews

This book is a mess
This book was published back in the 70s, before the advent of LaTeX. And it shows. In particular, it is no good as a reference for this reason: each time you try to look something up, the page is too overcrowded with symbols to find what you're looking for. In addition, to use this book to learn stochastic processes puts you through a whole lot more trouble than you'll probably need. Each deduction in the book is long, boring, and hard. Since I've read other books which are not, I'm going to assume it's the fault of the authors and their lack of LaTeX.

This book, not unlike quite a few in probability and statistics (e.g. Billingsley), is popular because old professors used it and don't bother to find a new one.

come to read prepared
Before going to the book, one advise is to have prerequisite to this topic, i.e. you need to come prepared with strong statistic and probability background since many of the derivation and proof assume the reader is well into the probability theory. I took the class from Stanford department of statistics, man, it doubled the time I spend comparing other statistics students since my training on probability is rather self-taught and not quite systemetic. Well, overall, it's a classic..

A wonderful introduction to stochastic processes
This is one of those rare mathematical books that is both deeply
informative, and a sheer pleasure to read. The book is written in a
delightful old mathematical style, where the authors take you by hand
through the difficult passages and derivations. The intuition about
stochastic processes is so well conveyed, and the mathematics so well
explained, that the book can be read with little or no recourse to
pencil and paper, much as if it were an armchair book. The book
presents a comprehensive overview of the theory of stochastic
processes, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested into
learning their foundations.