The Fright of Real Tears: Krzysztof Kieślowski Between Theory And Post Theory (2001)

This volume contains two review articles: "Stochastic Pro­ gramming" by Vo V. Kolbin, and "Application of Queueing-Theoretic Methods in Operations Research, " by N. Po Buslenko and A. P. Cherenkovo The first article covers almost all aspects of stochastic programming. Many of the results presented in it have not pre­ viously been surveyed in the Soviet literature and are of interest to both mathematicians and economists. The second article com­ prises an exhaustive treatise on the present state of the art of the statistical methods of queueing theory and the statistical modeling of queueing systems as applied to the analysis of complex systems.

It is thought as necessary to write a Preface before a Book, as it is judged civil, when you invite a Friend to Dinner, to proffer him a Glass of Hock beforehand for a Whet. John Arbuthnot, from the preface to his translation of Huygens's "De Ratiociniis in Ludo Alooe". Prompted by an awareness of the importance of Bayesian ideas in modern statistical theory and practice, I decided some years ago to undertake a study of the development and growth of such ideas. At the time it seemed appropriate to begin such an investigation with an examination of Bayes's Essay towards solving a problem in the doctrine of chances and Laplace's Theorie analytique des probabilites, and then to pass swiftly on to a brief consideration of other nineteenth century works before turning to what would be the main topic of the treatise, videlicet the rise of Bayesian statis­ tics from the 1950's to the present day.

This book is an introduction to the regularity theory for free boundary problems. The focus is on the one-phase Bernoulli problem, which is of particular interest as it deeply influenced the development of the modern free boundary regularity theory and is still an object of intensive research.