Stochastic Control And Mathematical Modeling

Introduces stochastic control and mathematical modelling to researchers and graduate students in applied mathematics, mathematical economics, and non-linear PDE theory.

This volume collects papers, based on invited talks given at the IMA workshop in Modeling, Stochastic Control, Optimization, and Related Applications, held at the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications, University of Minnesota, during May and June, 2018. There were four week-long workshops during the conference. They are (1) stochastic control, computation methods, and applications, (2) queueing theory and networked systems, (3) ecological and biological applications, and (4) finance and economics applications. For broader impacts, researchers from different fields covering both theoretically oriented and application intensive areas were invited to participate in the conference. It brought together researchers from multi-disciplinary communities in applied mathematics, applied probability, engineering, biology, ecology, and networked science, to review, and substantially update most recent progress. As an archive, this volume presents some of the highlights of the workshops, and collect papers covering a broad range of topics.

This book aims to provide a unified treatment of input/output modelling and of control for discrete-time dynamical systems subject to random disturbances. The results presented are of wide applica bility in control engineering, operations research, econometric modelling and many other areas. There are two distinct approaches to mathematical modelling of physical systems: a direct analysis of the physical mechanisms that comprise the process, or a 'black box' approach based on analysis of input/output data. The second approach is adopted here, although of course the properties ofthe models we study, which within the limits of linearity are very general, are also relevant to the behaviour of systems represented by such models, however they are arrived at. The type of system we are interested in is a discrete-time or sampled-data system where the relation between input and output is (at least approximately) linear and where additive random dis turbances are also present, so that the behaviour of the system must be investigated by statistical methods. After a preliminary chapter summarizing elements of probability and linear system theory, we introduce in Chapter 2 some general linear stochastic models, both in input/output and state-space form. Chapter 3 concerns filtering theory: estimation of the state of a dynamical system from noisy observations. As well as being an important topic in its own right, filtering theory provides the link, via the so-called innovations representation, between input/output models (as identified by data analysis) and state-space models, as required for much contemporary control theory.

This volume builds upon the foundations set in Volumes 1 and 2. Chapter 13 introduces the basic concepts of stochastic control and dynamic programming as the fundamental means of synthesizing optimal stochastic control laws.

Stochastic control plays an important role in many scientific and applied disciplines including communications, engineering, medicine, finance and many others. It is one of the effective methods being used to find optimal decision-making strategies in applications. The book provides a collection of outstanding investigations in various aspects of stochastic systems and their behavior. The book provides a self-contained treatment on practical aspects of stochastic modeling and calculus including applications drawn from engineering, statistics, and computer science. Readers should be familiar with basic probability theory and have a working knowledge of stochastic calculus. PhD students and researchers in stochastic control will find this book useful.

This book collects some recent developments in stochastic control theory with applications to financial mathematics. We first address standard stochastic control problems from the viewpoint of the recently developed weak dynamic programming principle. A special emphasis is put on the regularity issues and, in particular, on the behavior of the value function near the boundary. We then provide a quick review of the main tools from viscosity solutions which allow to overcome all regularity problems. We next address the class of stochastic target problems which extends in a nontrivial way the standard stochastic control problems. Here the theory of viscosity solutions plays a crucial role in the derivation of the dynamic programming equation as the infinitesimal counterpart of the corresponding geometric dynamic programming equation. The various developments of this theory have been stimulated by applications in finance and by relevant connections with geometric flows. Namely, the second order extension was motivated by illiquidity modeling, and the controlled loss version was introduced following the problem of quantile hedging. The third part specializes to an overview of Backward stochastic differential equations, and their extensions to the quadratic case.​

In this book, we study theoretical and practical aspects of computing methods for mathematical modelling of nonlinear systems. A number of computing techniques are considered, such as methods of operator approximation with any given accuracy; operator interpolation techniques including a non-Lagrange interpolation; methods of system representation subject to constraints associated with concepts of causality, memory and stationarity; methods of system representation with an accuracy that is the best within a given class of models; methods of covariance matrix estimation;methods for low-rank matrix approximations; hybrid methods based on a combination of iterative procedures and best operator approximation; andmethods for information compression and filtering under condition that a filter model should satisfy restrictions associated with causality and different types of memory.As a result, the book represents a blend of new methods in general computational analysis,and specific, but also generic, techniques for study of systems theory ant its particularbranches, such as optimal filtering and information compression. - Best operator approximation,- Non-Lagrange interpolation,- Generic Karhunen-Loeve transform- Generalised low-rank matrix approximation- Optimal data compression- Optimal nonlinear filtering

The goal of this textbook is to introduce students to the stochastic analysis tools that play an increasing role in the probabilistic approach to optimization problems, including stochastic control and stochastic differential games. While optimal control is taught in many graduate programs in applied mathematics and operations research, the author was intrigued by the lack of coverage of the theory of stochastic differential games. This is the first title in SIAM?s Financial Mathematics book series and is based on the author?s lecture notes. It will be helpful to students who are interested in stochastic differential equations (forward, backward, forward-backward); the probabilistic approach to stochastic control (dynamic programming and the stochastic maximum principle); and mean field games and control of McKean?Vlasov dynamics. The theory is illustrated by applications to models of systemic risk, macroeconomic growth, flocking/schooling, crowd behavior, and predatory trading, among others.