This book contains work-outs of the notes of three 15-hour courses of
lectures which constitute surveys on the concerned topics given at the
St. Flour Probability Summer School in July 1992. The first course, by
D. Bakry, is concerned with hypercontractivity properties and their use
in semi-group theory, namely Sobolev and Log Sobolev inequa- lities,
with estimations on the density of the semi-groups. The second one, by
R.D. Gill, is about statistics on survi- val analysis; it includes
product-integral theory, Kaplan- Meier estimators, and a look at
cryptography and generation of randomness. The third one, by S.A.
Molchanov, covers three aspects of random media: homogenization theory,
loca- lization properties and intermittency. Each of these chap- ters
provides an introduction to and survey of its subject.