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Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set of axioms. Typically these axioms formalise probability in terms of a probability space, which assigns a measure taking values between 0 and 1, termed the probability measure, to a set of outcomes called the sample space. Any specified subset of the sample space is called an event. Central subjects in probability theory include discrete and continuous random variables, probability distributions, and stochastic processes . Although it is not possible to perfectly predict random events, much can be said about their behavior. Two major results in probability theory describing such behaviour are the law of large numbers and the central limit theorem.
In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is the mathematical function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of different possible outcomes for an experiment. It is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon in terms of its sample space and the probabilities of events.
A random variable is a mathematical formalization of a quantity or object which depends on random events.
Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analysing, modifying, and synthesizing signals such as sound, images, and scientific measurements. Signal processing techniques can be used to improve transmission, storage efficiency and subjective quality and to also emphasize or detect components of interest in a measured signal.
In probability theory and related fields, a stochastic or random process is a mathematical object usually defined as a family of random variables. 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, cryptography and telecommunications. Furthermore, seemingly random changes in financial markets have motivated the extensive use of stochastic processes in finance.
A Markov chain or Markov process is a stochastic model describing a sequence of possible events in which the probability of each event depends only on the state attained in the previous event. A countably infinite sequence, in which the chain moves state at discrete time steps, gives a discrete-time Markov chain (DTMC). A continuous-time process is called a continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC). It is named after the Russian mathematician Andrey Markov.
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 signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing includes audio, video, speech, image, sonar, and radar as examples of signal. A signal may also be defined as any observable change in a quantity over space or time, even if it does not carry information.
In probability theory and statistics, the term Markov property refers to the memoryless property of a stochastic process. It is named after the Russian mathematician Andrey Markov. The term strong Markov property is similar to the Markov property, except that the meaning of "present" is defined in terms of a random variable known as a stopping time.
In mathematics and statistics, a stationary process is a stochastic process whose unconditional joint probability distribution does not change when shifted in time. Consequently, parameters such as mean and variance also do not change over time. To get an intuition of stationarity, one can imagine a frictionless pendulum. It swings back and forth in an oscillatory motion, yet the amplitude and frequency remain constant. Although the pendulum is moving, the process is stationary as its "statistics" are constant. However, if a force were to be applied to the pendulum, either the frequency or amplitude would change, thus making the process non-stationary.
In physics and mathematics, a random field is a random function over an arbitrary domain. That is, it is a function that takes on a random value at each point (or some other domain). It is also sometimes thought of as a synonym for a stochastic process with some restriction on its index set. That is, by modern definitions, a random field is a generalization of a stochastic process where the underlying parameter need no longer be real or integer valued "time" but can instead take values that are multidimensional vectors or points on some manifold.
Mathematical statistics is the application of probability theory, a branch of mathematics, to statistics, as opposed to techniques for collecting statistical data. Specific mathematical techniques which are used for this include mathematical analysis, linear algebra, stochastic analysis, differential equations, and measure theory.
In probability theory, random element is a generalization of the concept of random variable to more complicated spaces than the simple real line. The concept was introduced by Maurice Fréchet (1948) who commented that the “development of probability theory and expansion of area of its applications have led to necessity to pass from schemes where (random) outcomes of experiments can be described by number or a finite set of numbers, to schemes where outcomes of experiments represent, for example, vectors, functions, processes, fields, series, transformations, and also sets or collections of sets.”
A stochastic simulation is a simulation of a system that has variables that can change stochastically (randomly) with individual probabilities.
In mathematics, Doob's martingale inequality, also known as Kolmogorov’s submartingale inequality is a result in the study of stochastic processes. It gives a bound on the probability that a submartingale exceeds any given value over a given interval of time. As the name suggests, the result is usually given in the case that the process is a martingale, but the result is also valid for submartingales.
In probability theory, a continuous stochastic process is a type of stochastic process that may be said to be "continuous" as a function of its "time" or index parameter. Continuity is a nice property for a process to have, since it implies that they are well-behaved in some sense, and, therefore, much easier to analyze. It is implicit here that the index of the stochastic process is a continuous variable. Some authors define a "continuous (stochastic) process" as only requiring that the index variable be continuous, without continuity of sample paths: in some terminology, this would be a continuous-time stochastic process, in parallel to a "discrete-time process". Given the possible confusion, caution is needed.
Stochastic control or stochastic optimal control is a sub field of control theory that deals with the existence of uncertainty either in observations or in the noise that drives the evolution of the system. The system designer assumes, in a Bayesian probability-driven fashion, that random noise with known probability distribution affects the evolution and observation of the state variables. Stochastic control aims to design the time path of the controlled variables that performs the desired control task with minimum cost, somehow defined, despite the presence of this noise. The context may be either discrete time or continuous time.
In mathematical dynamics, discrete time and continuous time are two alternative frameworks within which variables that evolve over time are modeled.
In mathematics and statistics, a quantitative variable may be continuous or discrete if they are typically obtained by measuring or counting, respectively. If it can take on two particular real values such that it can also take on all real values between them, the variable is continuous in that interval. If it can take on a value such that there is a non-infinitesimal gap on each side of it containing no values that the variable can take on, then it is discrete around that value. In some contexts a variable can be discrete in some ranges of the number line and continuous in others.
References
- ↑ Parzen, E. (1962) Stochastic Processes, Holden-Day. ISBN 0-8162-6664-6 (Chapter 6)
- 1 2 Dodge, Y. (2006) The Oxford Dictionary of Statistical Terms, OUP. ISBN 0-19-920613-9 (Entry for "continuous process")
- ↑ Paul, Wolfgang; Baschnagel, Jörg (2013-07-11). Stochastic Processes: From Physics to Finance. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 72–74. ISBN 9783319003276 . Retrieved 20 June 2022.