The book focuses on probability metrics suitable for the characterization of random variables in Hilbert or Banach space. It provides details of various stochastic processes, such as testing non-deterministic statistical hypotheses, characterization of probability distribution or constructing multidimensional test for two selections. The book is published in the English language.

This book covers the method of metric distances and its application in probability theory and other fields. The method is fundamental in the study of limit theorems and generally in assessing the quality of approximations to a given probabilistic model. The method of metric distances is developed to study stability problems and reduces to the selection of an ideal or the most appropriate metric for the problem under consideration and a comparison of probability metrics. After describing the basic structure of probability metrics and providing an analysis of the topologies in the space of probability measures generated by different types of probability metrics, the authors study stability problems by providing a characterization of the ideal metrics for a given problem and investigating the main relationships between different types of probability metrics. The presentation is provided in a general form, although specific cases are considered as they arise in the process of finding supplementary bounds or in applications to important special cases. Svetlozar T. Rachev is the Frey Family Foundation Chair of Quantitative Finance, Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, SUNY-Stony Brook and Chief Scientist of Finanlytica, USA. Lev B. Klebanov is a Professor in the Department of Probability and Mathematical Statistics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. Stoyan V. Stoyanov is a Professor at EDHEC Business School and Head of Research, EDHEC-Risk Institute—Asia (Singapore). Frank J. Fabozzi is a Professor at EDHEC Business School. (USA)

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 18th International Workshop on Combinatorial Image Analysis, IWCIA 2017, held in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, in June 2017. The 27 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 47 submissions. The workshop is organized in topical sections of theoretical foundations and theory of applications, namely: discrete geometry and topology; tilings and patterns; grammars, models and other technical tools for image analysis; image segmentation, classification; reconstruction; compression; texture analysis; bioimaging.