Bücher von Wolf Schwarz

This book offers an accessible introduction to random walk and diffusion models at a level consistent with the typical background of students in the life sciences. In recent decades these models have become widely used in areas far beyond their traditional origins in physics, for example, in studies of animal behavior, ecology, sociology, sports science, population genetics, public health applications, and human decision making.  Developing the main formal concepts, the book provides detailed and intuitive step-by-step explanations, and moves smoothly from simple to more complex models. Finally, in the last chapter, some successful and original applications of random walk and diffusion models in the life and behavioral sciences are illustrated in detail. The treatment of basic techniques and models is consolidated and extended throughout by a set of carefully chosen exercises.  

As a student I discovered in our library a thin booklet by Frederick Mosteller entitled50 Challenging Problems in Probability. Itreferredtoas- plementary "e;regular textbook"e; by William Feller, An Introduction to Pro- bilityTheoryanditsApplications.SoItookthisonealong,too,andstartedon the ?rst of Mosteller's problems on the train riding home. From that evening, I caught on to probability. These two books were not primarily about abstract formalisms but rather about basic modeling ideas and about ways - often extremely elegant ones - to apply those notions to a surprising variety of empirical phenomena. Essentially, these books taught the reader the skill to "e;think probabilistically"e; and to apply simple probability models to real-world problems. The present book is in this tradition; it is based on the view that those cognitive skills are best acquired by solving challenging, nonstandard pro- bility problems. My own experience, both in learning and in teaching, is that challenging problems often help to develop, and to sharpen, our probabilistic intuition much better than plain-style deductions from abstract concepts.