Universal codes efficiently compress sequences generated by stationary
and ergodic sources with unknown statistics, and they were originally
designed for lossless data compression. In the meantime, it was realized
that they can be used for solving important problems of prediction and
statistical analysis of time series, and this book describes recent
results in this area.
The first chapter introduces and describes the application of universal
codes to prediction and the statistical analysis of time series; the
second chapter describes applications of selected statistical methods to
cryptography, including attacks on block ciphers; and the third chapter
describes a homogeneity test used to determine authorship of literary
texts.
The book will be useful for researchers and advanced students in
information theory, mathematical statistics, time-series analysis, and
cryptography. It is assumed that the reader has some grounding in
statistics and in information theory.