It is not so very long ago that up-to-date text-books on statistics were
almost non-existent. In the last few decades this deficiency has largely
been remedied, but in order to cope with a broad and rapidly expanding
subject many of these books have been fairly big and expensive. The
success of Methuen's existing series of monographs, in physics or in
biology, for example, stresses the value of short inexpensive treatments
to which a student can turn for an introduc- tion to, or a revision of,
specialised topics. In this new Methuen series the still-growing
importance of prob- ability theory in its applied aspects has been
recognised by coupling together Probability and Statistics; and included
in the series are some of the newer applications of probability theory
to stochastic models in various fields, storage and service problems,
'Monte Carlo' techniques, etc., as well as monographs on particular
statistical topics. M. S. BARTLETT ix AUTHOR'S PREFACE The theory of
stochastic processes has developed in the last three decades. Its field
of application is constantly expanding and at present it is being
applied in nearly every branch of science. So far several books have
been written on the mathematical theory of stochastic processes. The
nature of this book is different because it is primarily a collection of
problems and their solutions, and is intended for readers who are
already familiar with probability theory.