Maximum Entropy And Bayesian Methods Santa Barbara California U S A 1993

Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Workshop on Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods

This volume contains selections from among the presentations at the Thirteenth International Workshop on Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods- MAXENT93 for short- held at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), August 1-5, 1993. This annual workshop is devoted to the theory and practice of Bayesian probability and the use of the maximum entropy principle in assigning prior probabilities. Like its predecessors, MAXENT93 attracted researchers and scholars representing a wide diversity of disciplines and applications. These included physicists, geophysicists, astronomers, statisticians, engineers, and economists, among others. Indeed Bayesian methods increasingly compel the interest of any who would apply scientific inference. The impressive successes, so evident in the proceedings of the past workshops, when adherence to Bayesian principles replaces popular ad hoc approaches in problems of inference, continue. Many are reported in this volume. It is perhaps indicative of the growing acceptance of Bayesian methods that the most prominent controversy at the thirteenth workshop was not a Bayesian- frequents confrontation but rather a disagreement over the suitability of using an approximation in the Bayesian formalism.

In 1978 Edwin T. Jaynes and Myron Tribus initiated a series of workshops to exchange ideas and recent developments in technical aspects and applications of Bayesian probability theory. The first workshop was held at the University of Wyoming in 1981 organized by C.R. Smith and W.T. Grandy. Due to its success, the workshop was held annually during the last 18 years. Over the years, the emphasis of the workshop shifted gradually from fundamental concepts of Bayesian probability theory to increasingly realistic and challenging applications. The 18th international workshop on Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods was held in Garching / Munich (Germany) (27-31. July 1998). Opening lectures by G. Larry Bretthorst and by Myron Tribus were dedicated to one of th the pioneers of Bayesian probability theory who died on the 30 of April 1998: Edwin Thompson Jaynes. Jaynes revealed and advocated the correct meaning of 'probability' as the state of knowledge rather than a physical property. This inter pretation allowed him to unravel longstanding mysteries and paradoxes. Bayesian probability theory, "the logic of science" - as E.T. Jaynes called it - provides the framework to make the best possible scientific inference given all available exper imental and theoretical information. We gratefully acknowledge the efforts of Tribus and Bretthorst in commemorating the outstanding contributions of E.T. Jaynes to the development of probability theory.

The 10th International Workshop on Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods, MaxEnt 90, was held in Laramie, Wyoming from 30 July to 3 August 1990. This volume contains the scientific presentations given at that meeting. This series of workshops originated in Laramie in 1981, where the first three of what were to become annual workshops were held. The fourth meeting was held in Calgary. the fifth in Laramie, the sixth and seventh in Seattle, the eighth in Cambridge, England, and the ninth at Hanover, New Hampshire. It is most appropriate that the tenth workshop, occurring in the centennial year of Wyoming's statehood, was once again held in Laramie. The original purpose of these workshops was twofold. The first was to bring together workers from diverse fields of scientific research who individually had been using either some form of the maximum entropy method for treating ill-posed problems or the more general Bayesian analysis, but who, because of the narrow focus that intra-disciplinary work tends to impose upon most of us, might be unaware of progress being made by others using these same techniques in other areas. The second was to introduce to those who were somewhat aware of maximum entropy and Bayesian analysis and wanted to learn more, the foundations, the gestalt, and the power of these analyses. To further the first of these ends, presenters at these workshops have included workers from area. s as varied as astronomy, economics, environmenta.

Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Workshop on Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, 1995

This book is written for theoretical and mathematical physicists and mat- maticians interested in recent developments in complex general relativity and their application to classical and quantum gravity. Calculations are presented by paying attention to those details normally omitted in research papers, for pedagogical r- sons. Familiarity with fibre-bundle theory is certainly helpful, but in many cases I only rely on two-spinor calculus and conformally invariant concepts in gravitational physics. The key concepts the book is devoted to are complex manifolds, spinor techniques, conformal gravity, ?-planes, ?-surfaces, Penrose transform, complex 3 1 – – space-time models with non-vanishing torsion, spin- fields and spin- potentials. 2 2 Problems have been inserted at the end, to help the reader to check his und- standing of these topics. Thus, I can find at least four reasons for writing yet another book on spinor and twistor methods in general relativity: (i) to write a textbook useful to - ginning graduate students and research workers, where two-component spinor c- culus is the unifying mathematical language.

This monograph is devoted to the problem of the geometrizing of Lagrangians which depend on higher-order accelerations. It presents a construction of the geometry of the total space of the bundle of the accelerations of order k>=1. A geometrical study of the notion of the higher-order Lagrange space is conducted, and the old problem of prolongation of Riemannian spaces to k-osculator manifolds is solved. Also, the geometrical ground for variational calculus on the integral of actions involving higher-order Lagrangians is dealt with. Applications to higher-order analytical mechanics and theoretical physics are included as well. Audience: This volume will be of interest to scientists whose work involves differential geometry, mechanics of particles and systems, calculus of variation and optimal control, optimization, optics, electromagnetic theory, and biology.