In probability theory and related fields, a stochastic or random process is a mathematical object usually defined as a family of random variables in a probability space, where the index of the family often has the interpretation of time. Stochastic processes are widely used as mathematical models of systems and phenomena that appear to vary in a random manner. Examples include the growth of a bacterial population, an electrical current fluctuating due to thermal noise, or the movement of a gas molecule. Stochastic processes have applications in many disciplines such as biology, chemistry, ecology, neuroscience, physics, image processing, signal processing, control theory, information theory, computer science, and telecommunications. Furthermore, seemingly random changes in financial markets have motivated the extensive use of stochastic processes in finance.
In mathematics, the Wiener process is a real-valued continuous-time stochastic process named in honor of American mathematician Norbert Wiener for his investigations on the mathematical properties of the one-dimensional Brownian motion. It is often also called Brownian motion due to its historical connection with the physical process of the same name originally observed by Scottish botanist Robert Brown. It is one of the best known Lévy processes and occurs frequently in pure and applied mathematics, economics, quantitative finance, evolutionary biology, and physics.
In probability theory, a martingale is a sequence of random variables for which, at a particular time, the conditional expectation of the next value in the sequence is equal to the present value, regardless of all prior values.
In probability theory, an event is said to happen almost surely if it happens with probability 1. In other words, the set of outcomes on which the event does not occur has probability 0, even though the set might not be empty. The concept is analogous to the concept of "almost everywhere" in measure theory. In probability experiments on a finite sample space with a non-zero probability for each outcome, there is no difference between almost surely and surely ; however, this distinction becomes important when the sample space is an infinite set, because an infinite set can have non-empty subsets of probability 0.
Eugene Borisovich Dynkin was a Soviet and American mathematician. He made contributions to the fields of probability and algebra, especially semisimple Lie groups, Lie algebras, and Markov processes. The Dynkin diagram, the Dynkin system, and Dynkin's lemma are named after him.
Itô calculus, named after Kiyosi Itô, extends the methods of calculus to stochastic processes such as Brownian motion. It has important applications in mathematical finance and stochastic differential equations.
Joseph Leo Doob was an American mathematician, specializing in analysis and probability theory.
Paul-André Meyer was a French mathematician, who played a major role in the development of the general theory of stochastic processes. He worked at the Institut de Recherche Mathématique (IRMA) in Strasbourg and is known as the founder of the 'Strasbourg school' in stochastic analysis.
In mathematics, a Bessel process, named after Friedrich Bessel, is a type of stochastic process.
Daniel Wyler Stroock is an American mathematician, a probabilist. He is regarded and revered as one of the fundamental contributors to Malliavin calculus with Shigeo Kusuoka and the theory of diffusion processes with S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan with an orientation towards the refinement and further development of Itô’s stochastic calculus.
In probability theory, a real valued stochastic process X is called a semimartingale if it can be decomposed as the sum of a local martingale and a càdlàg adapted finite-variation process. Semimartingales are "good integrators", forming the largest class of processes with respect to which the Itô integral and the Stratonovich integral can be defined.
This page lists articles related to probability theory. In particular, it lists many articles corresponding to specific probability distributions. Such articles are marked here by a code of the form (X:Y), which refers to number of random variables involved and the type of the distribution. For example (2:DC) indicates a distribution with two random variables, discrete or continuous. Other codes are just abbreviations for topics. The list of codes can be found in the table of contents.
Leonard Christopher Gordon Rogers is a mathematician working in probability theory and quantitative finance. He is Emeritus Professor of Statistical Science in the Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge.
Kai Lai Chung was a Chinese-American mathematician known for his significant contributions to modern probability theory.
Marc Yor was a French mathematician well known for his work on stochastic processes, especially properties of semimartingales, Brownian motion and other Lévy processes, the Bessel processes, and their applications to mathematical finance.
Ronald Kay Getoor was an American mathematician. Getoor received from the University of Michigan bachelor's degree in 1950, master's degree in 1951, and Ph.D. in 1954 under Arthur Herbert Copeland with thesis Connections between operators in Hilbert space and random functions of second order. As a postdoc he was an instructor at Princeton University. He became in 1956 an assistant professor and then full professor at the University of Washington. During the academic year 1964–1965 he was a visiting professor at Stanford University. From 1966 until his retirement in 2000 he was a professor at the University of California, San Diego.
Shinzō Watanabe is a Japanese mathematician, who has made fundamental contributions to probability theory, stochastic processes and stochastic differential equations. He is regarded and revered as one of the fundamental contributors to the modern probability theory and Stochastic calculus. The pioneering book “Stochastic Differential Equations and Diffusion Processes” he wrote with Nobuyuki Ikeda has attracted a lot of researchers into the area and is known as the “Ikeda-Watanabe” for researchers in the field of stochastic analysis. He had been served as the editor of Springer Mathematics.
Thomas G. Kurtz is an American emeritus professor of Mathematics and Statistics at University of Wisconsin-Madison known for his research contributions to many areas of probability theory and stochastic processes. In particular, Kurtz’s research focuses on convergence, approximation and representation of several important classes of Markov processes. His findings appear in scientific disciplines such as systems biology, population genetics, telecommunications networks and mathematical finance.
Tsirelson's stochastic differential equation is a stochastic differential equation which has a weak solution but no strong solution. It is therefore a counter-example and named after its discoverer Boris Tsirelson. Tsirelson's equation is of the form
