Josef Leydold - Böcker

Non-uniform random variate generation is an established research area in the intersection of mathematics, statistics and computer science. Although random variate generation with popular standard distributions have become part of every course on discrete event simulation and on Monte Carlo methods, the recent concept of universal (also called automatic or black-box) random variate generation can only be found dispersed in literature. This new concept has great practical advantages that are little known to most simulation practitioners. Being unique in its overall organization the book covers not only the mathematical and statistical theory, but also deals with the implementation of such methods. All algorithms introduced in the book are designed for practical use in simulation and have been coded and made available by the authors. Examples of possible applications of the presented algorithms (including option pricing, VaR and Bayesian statistics) are presented at the end of the book.

Eigenvectors of graph Laplacians have not, to date, been the subject of expository articles and thus they may seem a surprising topic for a book. The authors propose two motivations for this new LNM volume: (1) There are fascinating subtle differences between the properties of solutions of Schrödinger equations on manifolds on the one hand, and their discrete analogs on graphs. (2) “Geometric” properties of (cost) functions defined on the vertex sets of graphs are of practical interest for heuristic optimization algorithms. The observation that the cost functions of quite a few of the well-studied combinatorial optimization problems are eigenvectors of associated graph Laplacians has prompted the investigation of such eigenvectors.The volume investigates the structure of eigenvectors and looks at the number of their sign graphs (“nodal domains”), Perron components, graphs with extremal properties with respect to eigenvectors. The Rayleigh quotient and rearrangement of graphs form the main methodology.