Statistical Physics And Spatial Statistics

Statistical Physics and Spatial Statistics

Modern physics is confronted with a large variety of complex spatial patterns. Although both spatial statisticians and statistical physicists study random geometrical structures, there has been only little interaction between the two up to now because of different traditions and languages. This volume aims to change this situation by presenting in a clear way fundamental concepts of spatial statistics which are of great potential value for condensed matter physics and materials sciences in general, and for porous media, percolation and Gibbs processes in particular. Geometric aspects, in particular ideas of stochastic and integral geometry, play a central role throughout. With nonspecialist researchers and graduate students also in mind, prominent physicists give an excellent introduction here to modern ideas of statistical physics pertinent to this exciting field of research.

Statistical Physics and Spatial Statistics

Statistical Inference for Spatial Processes

This book is designed for specialists needing an introduction to statistical inference in spatial statistics and its applications. One of the author's themes is to show how these techniques give new insights into classical procedures (including new examples in likelihood theory) and newer statistical paradigms such as Monte-Carlo inference and pseudo-likelihood. Professor Ripley also stresses the importance of edge effects and of the lack of a unique asymptotic setting in spatial problems. Throughout, he discusses the foundational issues posed and the difficulties, both computational and philosophical, which arise. The final chapters consider image restoration and segmentation methods and the averaging and summarizing of images.