MAM 2006 : Markov anniversary meeting : an international conference to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of A.A. Markov : June 12-14, Charleston, South Carolina, USA

This book offers a fresh context for the ground-breaking work of the great mathematician Andrei Markov. A distinguished collection of scholars and scientists provide exciting new insights into the signifiance and contemporary applicability of Markov's work. The Markov Anniversary Meeting, June 12-14, 2006 was the fifth in a series of conferences devoted to the Numerical Solution of Markov Chains (NSMC). The prior four NSMC conferences were held in 1990, 1995, 1999, and 2003. The first two conferences were held in Raleigh, North Carolina, the third moved overseas to Zarazoga, Spain, and the fourth was held in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. This fifth and most recent Markov meeting occurred sooner than the usual 4-5 year schedule in order to celebrate two very important events: the 150th anniversary of Andrei A. Markov's birth and the 100th anniversary of his work on his chains. This special Markov Anniversary Meeting was held at the College of Charleston in historic Charleston, SC. The scope of the meeting was expanded to incorporate Markov work beyond the usual NSMC topics. Thus, this proceedings contains several papers describing the diverse applications of Markov's chains in diverse fields from web search and telecommunications to population and language modeling. Papers discuss Markov reward processes and Markov bounds, while another group of papers covers the use of chains in queueing theory. A third group of papers examines the techniques for analyzing enormous chains with the help of Kronecker algebra. Such techniques connect nicely with one of today's most famous applications of Markov chains, the PageRank chain used by Google to rank webpages. The proceedings conclude with a section devoted to applications of Markov chains. These proceedings are also available in print, ISBN 1-932482-34-2. You can order them through your bookstore. For editor bios and photos visit bosonbooks.com. Contents......Page 5 Preface......Page 7 Program Committee......Page 9 1. Seneta......Page 11 2. Burrage et. al.......Page 31 3. Cloth and Haverkort......Page 49 4. Marie......Page 65 5. Latouche......Page 79 6. Spaey, Houdt and Blondia......Page 89 7. Vuuren and Adan......Page 99 8. Tian and Perros......Page 111 9. Dopper, Gaujal and Vincent......Page 127 10. Horvath and Telek......Page 147 11. Hilgers and Langville......Page 165 12. Da Silva and Rubino......Page 179 13. Mamoun, Busic, Fourneau and Pekergin......Page 199 14. Dayar et. al.......Page 221 15. Langville and Meyer......Page 239 16. Benzi and Ucar......Page 249 17. Tancrez and Semal......Page 267 18. Kirkland......Page 281 19. Dayar......Page 289 20. Sbeity and Plateau......Page 311 21. Kumar......Page 325 22. Caswell......Page 329 Title from eBook title screen (viewed on August 3, 2006).