Twenty-four contributions, intended for a wide audience from various disciplines, cover a variety of applications of heavy-tailed modeling involving telecommunications, the Web, insurance, and finance. Along with discussion of specific applications are several papers devoted to time series analysis, regression, classical signal/noise detection problems, and the general structure of stable processes, viewed from a modeling standpoint. Emphasis is placed on developments in handling the numerical problems associated with stable distribution (a main technical difficulty until recently). No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Heavy tails –extreme events or values more common than expected –emerge everywhere: the economy, natural events, and social and information networks are just a few examples. Yet after decades of progress, they are still treated as mysterious, surprising, and even controversial, primarily because the necessary mathematical models and statistical methods are not widely known. This book, for the first time, provides a rigorous introduction to heavy-tailed distributions accessible to anyone who knows elementary probability. It tackles and tames the zoo of terminology for models and properties, demystifying topics such as the generalized central limit theorem and regular variation. It tracks the natural emergence of heavy-tailed distributions from a wide variety of general processes, building intuition. And it reveals the controversy surrounding heavy tails to be the result of flawed statistics, then equips readers to identify and estimate with confidence. Over 100 exercises complete this engaging package.

The Handbooks in Finance are intended to be a definitive source for comprehensive and accessible information in the field of finance. Each individual volume in the series should present an accurate self-contained survey of a sub-field of finance, suitable for use by finance and economics professors and lecturers, professional researchers, graduate students and as a teaching supplement. The goal is to have a broad group of outstanding volumes in various areas of finance. The Handbook of Heavy Tailed Distributions in Finance is the first handbook to be published in this series.This volume presents current research focusing on heavy tailed distributions in finance. The contributions cover methodological issues, i.e., probabilistic, statistical and econometric modelling under non- Gaussian assumptions, as well as the applications of the stable and other non -Gaussian models in finance and risk management.

The study of heavy-tailed distributions allows researchers to represent phenomena that occasionally exhibit very large deviations from the mean. The dynamics underlying these phenomena is an interesting theoretical subject, but the study of their statistical properties is in itself a very useful endeavor from the point of view of managing assets and controlling risk. In this book, the authors are primarily concerned with the statistical properties of heavy-tailed distributions and with the processes that exhibit jumps. A detailed overview with a Matlab implementation of heavy-tailed models applied in asset management and risk managements is presented. The book is not intended as a theoretical treatise on probability or statistics, but as a tool to understand the main concepts regarding heavy-tailed random variables and processes as applied to real-world applications in finance. Accordingly, the authors review approaches and methodologies whose realization will be useful for developing new methods for forecasting of financial variables where extreme events are not treated as anomalies, but as intrinsic parts of the economic process.

Heavy-tailed distributions are typical for phenomena in complex multi-component systems such as biometry, economics, ecological systems, sociology, web access statistics, internet traffic, biblio-metrics, finance and business. The analysis of such distributions requires special methods of estimation due to their specific features. These are not only the slow decay to zero of the tail, but also the violation of Cramer’s condition, possible non-existence of some moments, and sparse observations in the tail of the distribution. The book focuses on the methods of statistical analysis of heavy-tailed independent identically distributed random variables by empirical samples of moderate sizes. It provides a detailed survey of classical results and recent developments in the theory of nonparametric estimation of the probability density function, the tail index, the hazard rate and the renewal function. Both asymptotical results, for example convergence rates of the estimates, and results for the samples of moderate sizes supported by Monte-Carlo investigation, are considered. The text is illustrated by the application of the considered methodologies to real data of web traffic measurements.

This book provides a compact and systematic overview of closure properties of heavy-tailed and related distributions, including closure under tail equivalence, convolution, finite mixing, maximum, minimum, convolution power and convolution roots, and product-convolution closure. It includes examples and counterexamples that give an insight into the theory and provides numerous references to technical details and proofs for a deeper study of the subject. The book will serve as a useful reference for graduate students, young researchers, and applied scientists.

ADVANCES IN HEAVY TAILED RISK MODELING A cutting-edge guide for the theories, applications, and statistical methodologies essential to heavy tailed risk modeling Focusing on the quantitative aspects of heavy tailed loss processes in operational risk and relevant insurance analytics, Advances in Heavy Tailed Risk Modeling: A Handbook of Operational Risk presents comprehensive coverage of the latest research on the theories and applications in risk measurement and modeling techniques. Featuring a unique balance of mathematical and statistical perspectives, the handbook begins by introducing the motivation for heavy tailed risk processes. A companion with Fundamental Aspects of Operational Risk and Insurance Analytics: A Handbook of Operational Risk, the handbook provides a complete framework for all aspects of operational risk management and includes: Clear coverage on advanced topics such as splice loss models, extreme value theory, heavy tailed closed form loss distribution approach models, flexible heavy tailed risk models, risk measures, and higher order asymptotic approximations of risk measures for capital estimation An exploration of the characterization and estimation of risk and insurance modeling, which includes sub-exponential models, alpha-stable models, and tempered alpha stable models An extended discussion of the core concepts of risk measurement and capital estimation as well as the details on numerical approaches to evaluation of heavy tailed loss process model capital estimates Numerous detailed examples of real-world methods and practices of operational risk modeling used by both financial and non-financial institutions Advances in Heavy Tailed Risk Modeling: A Handbook of Operational Risk is an excellent reference for risk management practitioners, quantitative analysts, financial engineers, and risk managers. The handbook is also useful for graduate-level courses on heavy tailed processes, advanced risk management, and actuarial science.

This comprehensive text gives an interesting and useful blend of the mathematical, probabilistic and statistical tools used in heavy-tail analysis. It is uniquely devoted to heavy-tails and emphasizes both probability modeling and statistical methods for fitting models. Prerequisites for the reader include a prior course in stochastic processes and probability, some statistical background, some familiarity with time series analysis, and ability to use a statistics package. This work will serve second-year graduate students and researchers in the areas of applied mathematics, statistics, operations research, electrical engineering, and economics.

Reliable performance evaluations require the use of representative workloads. This is no easy task since modern computer systems and their workloads are complex, with many interrelated attributes and complicated structures. Experts often use sophisticated mathematics to analyze and describe workload models, making these models difficult for practitioners to grasp. This book aims to close this gap by emphasizing the intuition and the reasoning behind the definitions and derivations related to the workload models. It provides numerous examples from real production systems, with hundreds of graphs. Using this book, readers will be able to analyze collected workload data and clean it if necessary, derive statistical models that include skewed marginal distributions and correlations, and consider the need for generative models and feedback from the system. The descriptive statistics techniques covered are also useful for other domains.

This textbook highlights the many practical uses of stable distributions, exploring the theory, numerical algorithms, and statistical methods used to work with stable laws. Because of the author’s accessible and comprehensive approach, readers will be able to understand and use these methods. Both mathematicians and non-mathematicians will find this a valuable resource for more accurately modelling and predicting large values in a number of real-world scenarios. Beginning with an introductory chapter that explains key ideas about stable laws, readers will be prepared for the more advanced topics that appear later. The following chapters present the theory of stable distributions, a wide range of applications, and statistical methods, with the final chapters focusing on regression, signal processing, and related distributions. Each chapter ends with a number of carefully chosen exercises. Links to free software are included as well, where readers can put these methods into practice. Univariate Stable Distributions is ideal for advanced undergraduate or graduate students in mathematics, as well as many other fields, such as statistics, economics, engineering, physics, and more. It will also appeal to researchers in probability theory who seek an authoritative reference on stable distributions.