Probability and Statistics with Reliability, Queuing, and Computer Science Applications, 2nd Edition

Preface to the Second Edition

Nearly 20 years have passed since the publication of the first edition of this book. Its Indian edition is still in print and doing quite well. In this second edition, I have thoroughly revised all the chapters. Many examples and problems are updated, and many new examples and problems have been added. There is a considerable addition of examples on system availability modeling, wireless system performance and availability modeling, software reliability modeling, and system performability modeling. New material on fault trees and stochastic Petri nets, and numerical solution techniques for Markov chains has been added. A section on the computation of response time distribution for Markovian queuing networks has also been added. Chapter 8, on continuous-time Markov chains, has undergone the most change. My research experience and the application of these methods in practice for the past 25 years (at the time of writing) have been distilled in these chapters as much as possible. I hope that the book will be of use as a classroom textbook as well as of use for practicing engineers. Researchers will also find valuable material here. I have tried to avoid adding excessive and very advanced material. Thus, for instance, I have omitted discussion of Markov regenerative processes, fluid stochastic Petri nets, and binary decision diagrams. Other topics that are omitted include material on self-similarity, large deviation theory, and diffusion approximation. ...