Joseph Glaz - Böcker

Applied probability is a broad research area that is of interest to scientists in diverse disciplines in science and technology, including: anthropology, biology, communication theory, economics, epidemiology, finance, geography, linguistics, medicine, meteorology, operations research, psychology, quality control, sociology, and statistics. Recent Advances in Applied Probability is a collection of survey articles that bring together the work of leading researchers in applied probability to present current research advances in this important area. This volume will be of interest to graduate students and researchers whose research is closely connected to probability modelling and their applications. It is suitable for one semester graduate level research seminar in applied probability.

In many statistical applications the scientists have to analyze the occurrence of observed clusters of events in time or space. The scientists are especially interested to determine whether an observed cluster of events has occurred by chance if it is assumed that the events are distributed independently and uniformly over time or space. Applications of scan statistics have been recorded in many areas of science and technology including: geology, geography, medicine, minefield detection, molecular biology, photography, quality control and reliability theory and radio-optics.

This text presents advances in theory and methodology for this area of statistical research and application. The chapters contain broad coverage of theory and analytical and computational methods and techniques in four categories: introductory survey; discrete scan statistics; continuous scan statistics; and applications

Scan statistics is currently one of the most active and important areas of research in applied probability and statistics, having applications to a wide variety of fields: archaeology, astronomy, bioinformatics, biosurveillance, molecular biology, genetics, computer science, electrical engineering, geography, material sciences, physics, reconnaissance, reliability and quality control, telecommunication, and epidemiology.Filling a gap in the literature, this self-contained volume brings together a collection of selected chapters illustrating the depth and diversity of theory, methods and applications in the area of scan statistics. The chapters are written by leading experts in the field of scan statistics. Key features include many current results and new directions for future research; challenging theoretical methodological research problems; presentation accessible to both statisticians and scientists from other disciplines where scan statistics are employed; emphasis on real-world applications to areas such as bioinformatics and biosurveillance; and extensive references to research articles, books, and relevant computer software.Scan Statistics is an excellent reference for graduate students and researchers in applied probability and statistics, as well as for scientists in biology, computer science, pharmaceutical science, medicine, geography, quality control, communications, and epidemiology. The work may also be used as a textbook for a graduate-level seminar on scan statistics.

In many statistical applications the scientists have to analyze the occurrence of observed clusters of events in time or space. The scientists are especially interested to determine whether an observed cluster of events has occurred by chance if it is assumed that the events are distributed independently and uniformly over time or space.

The study of scan statistics and their applications to many different scientific and engineering problems have received considerable attention in the literature recently. In addition to challenging theoretical problems, the area of scan statis­ tics has also found exciting applications in diverse disciplines such as archaeol­ ogy, astronomy, epidemiology, geography, material science, molecular biology, reconnaissance, reliability and quality control, sociology, and telecommunica­ tion. This will be clearly evident when one goes through this volume. In this volume, we have brought together a collection of experts working in this area of research in order to review some of the developments that have taken place over the years and also to present their new works and point out some open problems. With this in mind, we selected authors for this volume with some having theoretical interests and others being primarily concerned with applications of scan statistics. Our sincere hope is that this volume will thus provide a comprehensive survey of all the developments in this area of research and hence will serve as a valuable source as well as reference for theoreticians and applied researchers. Graduate students interested in this area will find this volume to be particularly useful as it points out many open challenging problems that they could pursue. This volume will also be appropriate for teaching a graduate-level special course on this topic.

Scan statistics, one of the most active research areas in applied probability and statistics, has seen a tremendous growth during the last 25 years. Google Scholar lists about 3,500 hits to references of articles on scan statistics since the year 2020, resulting in over 850 hits to articles per year. This is mainly due to extensive and diverse areas of science and technology where scan statistics have been employed, including: atmospheric and climate sciences, business, computer science, criminology, ecology, epidemiology, finance, genetics and genomics, geographic sciences, medical and health sciences, nutrition, pharmaceutical sciences, physics, quality control and reliability, social networks and veterinary science.This volume of the Handbook of Scan Statistics is a collection of forty chapters, authored by leading experts in the field, outlines the research and the breadthof applications of scan statistics to  the numerous areas of science and technology listed above. These chapters present an overview of the theory, methods and computational techniques, related to research in the area of scan statistics and outline future developments. It contains extensive references to research articles, books and relevant computer software.Handbook of Scan Statistics is an excellent reference for researchers and graduate students in applied probability and statistics, as well as for scientists in research areas where scan statistics are used. This volume may also be used as a textbook for a graduate level course on scan statistics.

The “Handbook of Scan Statistics” in two volumes is intended for researchers in probability and statistics and scientists in several areas including biology, engineering, health, medical, and social sciences. It will be of great value to graduate students in statistics and in all areas where scan statistics are used.The specialized field called 'scan statistics', fathered by Joseph Naus around 1999, burgeoned rapidly to prominence in the broader fields of applied probability and statistics. In additional to challenging theoretical problems, scan statistics has exciting applications in many areas of science and technology including archaeology, astronomy, physics, bioinformatics, and food sciences, just to name a few.In many fields, decision makers give a great deal of weight to clusters of events. Public Health investigators look for common cause factors to explain clusters of, for example, cancer. Molecular biologists look for palindrome clusters in DNA for clues as to the origin of replication viruses. Telecommunication engineers design capacity to accommodate clusters of calls being dialed simultaneously to a switchboard. Quality control experts investigate clusters of defects. The probabilities of different types of clusters  under various conditions are tools of the physical, natural, and social sciences. Scan statistics arise naturally in the scanning of time and space, seeking clusters of events. It is therefore no surprise that scan statistics is a major area of research in probability and statistics in the 21st century.