A. D. Barbour – författare

The Poisson `law of small numbers' is a central principle in modern theories of reliability, insurance, and the statistics of extremes. It also has ramifications in apparently unrelated areas, such as the description of algebraic and combinatorial structures, and the distribution of prime numbers.The law of small numbers is only an approximation. In 1975, a new technique was introduced, the Stein-Chen method, which makes it possible to estimate the accuracy of the approximation in a wide range of situations. This book provides an introduction to the method, and a varied selection of examples of its application, emphasizing the flexibility of the technique when combined with a judicious choice of coupling. It also contains more advanced material, in particular on compound Poisson and Poisson process approximation, where the reader is brought to the boundaries of current knowledge.

From social networks to biological systems, networks are a fundamental part of modern life. Network analysis is increasingly popular across the mathematical, physical, life and social sciences, offering insights into a range of phenomena, from developing new drugs based on intracellular interactions, to understanding the influence of social interactions on behaviour patterns. This book provides a toolkit for analyzing random networks, together with theoretical justification of the methods proposed. It combines methods from both probability and statistics, teaching how to build and analyze plausible models for random networks, and how to validate such models, to detect unusual features in the data, and to make predictions. Theoretical results are motivated by applications across a range of fields, and classical data sets are used for illustration throughout the book. This book offers a comprehensive introduction to the field for graduate students and researchers.