This book introduces essential concepts in stochastic processes that interface seamlessly with applications of interest in science and engineering.

This book is devoted to an investigation of some important problems of mod ern filtering theory concerned with systems of 'any nature being able to per ceive, store and process an information and apply it for control and regulation'. (The above quotation is taken from the preface to [27]). Despite the fact that filtering theory is l'argely worked out (and its major issues such as the Wiener-Kolmogorov theory of optimal filtering of stationary processes and Kalman-Bucy recursive filtering theory have become classical) a development of the theory is far from complete. A great deal of recent activity in this area is observed, researchers are trying consistently to generalize famous results, extend them to more broad classes of processes, realize and justify more simple procedures for processing measurement data in order to obtain more efficient filtering algorithms. As to nonlinear filter ing, it remains much as fragmentary. Here much progress has been made by R. L. Stratonovich and his successors in the area of filtering of Markov processes. In this volume an effort is made to advance in certain of these issues. The monograph has evolved over many years, coming of age by stages. First it was an impressive job of gathering together the bulk of the impor tant contributions to estimation theory, an understanding and moderniza tion of some of its results and methods, with the intention of applying them to recursive filtering problems.

This book is based on a seminar given at the University of California at Los Angeles in the Spring of 1975. The choice of topics reflects my interests at the time and the needs of the students taking the course. Initially the lectures were written up for publication in the Lecture Notes series. How ever, when I accepted Professor A. V. Balakrishnan's invitation to publish them in the Springer series on Applications of Mathematics it became necessary to alter the informal and often abridged style of the notes and to rewrite or expand much of the original manuscript so as to make the book as self-contained as possible. Even so, no attempt has been made to write a comprehensive treatise on filtering theory, and the book still follows the original plan of the lectures. While this book was in preparation, the two-volume English translation of the work by R. S. Liptser and A. N. Shiryaev has appeared in this series. The first volume and the present book have the same approach to the sub ject, viz. that of martingale theory. Liptser and Shiryaev go into greater detail in the discussion of statistical applications and also consider inter polation and extrapolation as well as filtering.

This unified treatment presents material previously available only in journals, and in terms accessible to engineering students. Although theory is emphasized, it discusses numerous practical applications as well. 1970 edition.

* Unique in its survey of the range of topics. * Contains a strong, interdisciplinary format that will appeal to both students and researchers. * Features exercises and web links to software and data sets.

This book provides a comprehensive account of stochastic filtering as a modeling tool in finance and economics. It aims to present this very important tool with a view to making it more popular among researchers in the disciplines of finance and economics. It is not intended to give a complete mathematical treatment of different stochastic filtering approaches, but rather to describe them in simple terms and illustrate their application with real historical data for problems normally encountered in these disciplines. Beyond laying out the steps to be implemented, the steps are demonstrated in the context of different market segments. Although no prior knowledge in this area is required, the reader is expected to have knowledge of probability theory as well as a general mathematical aptitude. Its simple presentation of complex algorithms required to solve modeling problems in increasingly sophisticated financial markets makes this book particularly valuable as a reference for graduate students and researchers interested in the field. Furthermore, it analyses the model estimation results in the context of the market and contrasts these with contemporary research publications. It is also suitable for use as a text for graduate level courses on stochastic modeling.

This volume contains the contributions to a conference that is among the most important meetings in financial mathematics. Serving as a bridge between probabilists in Japan (called the Ito School and known for its highly sophisticated mathematics) and mathematical finance and financial engineering, the conference elicits the very highest quality papers in the field of financial mathematics.