General Irreducible Markov Chains and Non-Negative Operators (Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics)

Rating:
Summary: Reprint of a classic book
Review: The paperback edition of the classic book in 1984 is a most welcome one. Considering that it is at such an incredibly low price, it should attract most interest from researchers and students in this area. Even if there are quite a few new books on Markov chains such as Tweedie and Meyn, Norris, etc, I think Nummerlin's book is the first systematic account of the continuous state space Markov chain theory in a very elegant manner. I think students may be better helped by reading first some of the elementary probability books on finite state and discrete-state Markov chains before jumping to the much more intricate continuous theory. Markov chain theory has found more applications in statistics arising from Bayesian computation to bioinformatics. Students should benefit greatly later on by mastering this important branch of probability early.