We consider some generalizations of the germ-grain growing model studied by Daley, Mallows and Shepp (2000). In this model, a realization of a Poisson process on a line with points Xi is fixed. At time zero, simultaneously at each Xi, a circle (grain) starts growing at the same speed. It grows until it touches another grain, and then it stops. The question is whether the point zero is eventually covered by some circle. In our note we expand this model in the following three directions. We study: a one-sided growth model with a fixed number of circles; a grain-growth model on a regular tree; and a grain-growth model on a line with non-Poisson distributed centres of the circles.

It is proved that the shape of the typical cell of a stationary Poisson-Voronoi tessellation in Euclidean space, under the condition that the volume of the typical cell is large, must be close to spherical, with high probability. The same holds if the volume is replaced by the surface area or other suitable functionals. Similar results are established for the zero cell of a stationary and isotropic Poisson hyperplane tessellation.

Let ξ1, ξ2,… be a Poisson point process of density λ on (0,∞)d, d ≥ 1, and let ρ, ρ1, ρ2,… be i.i.d. positive random variables independent of the point process. Let C := ⋃i≥1 {ξi + [0,ρi]d}. If, for some t > 0, (0,∞)d ⊆ C, then we say that (0,∞)d is eventually covered by C. We show that the eventual coverage of (0,∞)d depends on the behaviour of xP(ρ > x) as x → ∞ as well as on whether d = 1 or d ≥ 2. These results may be compared to those known for complete coverage of ℝd by such Poisson Boolean models. In addition, we consider the set ⋃{i≥1:Xi=1} [i,i+ρi], where X1, X2,… is a {0,1}-valued Markov chain and ρ1, ρ2,… are i.i.d. positive-integer-valued random variables independent of the Markov chain. We study the eventual coverage properties of this random set.

We consider a stochastic model describing the growth of two competing infections on ℝd. The growth takes place by way of spherical outbursts in the infected region, an outburst in the type-1 or -2 infected region causing all previously uninfected points within a stochastic distance from the outburst location to become type-1 or -2 infected, respectively. The main result is that, if the infection types have the same intensity, then there is a strictly positive probability that both infection types grow unboundedly.

An exact expression is determined for the asymptotic constant c2 in the limit theorem by P. Groeneboom (1988), which states that the number of vertices of the convex hull of a uniform sample of n random points from a circular disk satisfies a central limit theorem, as n → ∞, with asymptotic variance 2πc2n1/3.

In Bhatt and Roy's minimal directed spanning tree construction for n random points in the unit square, all edges must be in a south-westerly direction and there must be a directed path from each vertex to the root placed at the origin. We identify the limiting distributions (for large n) for the total length of rooted edges, and also for the maximal length of all edges in the tree. These limit distributions have been seen previously in analysis of the Poisson-Dirichlet distribution and elsewhere; they are expressed in terms of Dickman's function, and their properties are discussed in some detail.

We consider the problem of estimating the boundary of a compact set S ⊂ ℝd from a random sample of points taken from S. We use the Devroye-Wise estimator which is a union of balls centred at the sample points with a common radius (the smoothing parameter in this problem). A universal consistency result, with respect to the Hausdorff metric, is proved and convergence rates are also obtained under broad intuitive conditions of a geometrical character. In particular, a shape condition on S, which we call expandability, plays an important role in our results. The simple structure of the considered estimator presents some practical advantages (for example, the computational identification of the boundary is very easy) and makes this problem quite close to some basic issues in stochastic geometry.

We study the asymptotic properties of a minimal spanning tree formed by n points uniformly distributed in the unit square, where the minimality is amongst all rooted spanning trees with a direction of growth. We show that the number of branches from the root of this tree, the total length of these branches, and the length of the longest branch each converges weakly. This model is related to the study of record values in the theory of extreme-value statistics and this relation is used to obtain our results. The results also hold when the tree is formed from a Poisson point process of intensity n in the unit square.

A stereological formula for the Euler number involving projections of the set in thin parallel slabs is considered. Sufficient conditions for the validity of this formula are derived.

We address the problem of tracking the time-varying linear subspaces (of a larger system) under a Bayesian framework. Variations in subspaces are treated as a piecewise-geodesic process on a complex Grassmann manifold and a Markov prior is imposed on it. This prior model, together with an observation model, gives rise to a hidden Markov model on a Grassmann manifold, and admits Bayesian inferences. A sequential Monte Carlo method is used for sampling from the time-varying posterior and the samples are used to estimate the underlying process. Simulation results are presented for principal subspace tracking in array signal processing.

In this paper, we consider a model of social learning in a population of myopic, memoryless agents. The agents are placed at integer points on an infinite line. Each time period, they perform experiments with one of two technologies, then each observes the outcomes and technology choices of the two adjacent agents as well as his own outcome. Two learning rules are considered; it is shown that under the first, where an agent changes his technology only if he has had a failure (a bad outcome), the society converges with probability 1 to the better technology. In the other, where agents switch on the basis of the neighbourhood averages, convergence occurs if the better technology is sufficiently better. The results provide a surprisingly optimistic conclusion about the diffusion of the better technology through imitation, even under the assumption of extremely boundedly rational agents.

In a convex domain K in ℝd, a transmitter and a receiver are placed at random according to the uniform distribution. The statistics of the power received by the receiver is an important quantity for the design of wireless communication systems. Bounds for the moments of the received power are given, which depend only on the volume and the surface area of the convex domain.

We consider a pair of Markov chains representing statistics of the Fisher-Wright-Moran model with mutations and drift. The chains have absorbing state at 0 and are related by the fact that some random time τ ago they were identical, evolving as a single Markov chain with values in {0,1,…}; from that time on they began to evolve independently, conditional on a state at the time of split, according to the same transition probabilities. The distribution of τ is a function of deterministic effective population size 2N(·). We study the impact of demographic history on the shape of the quasi-stationary distribution, conditional on nonabsorption at the margin (where one of the chains is at 0), and on the speed with which the probability mass escapes to the margin.

Throw n points sequentially and at random onto a unit circle and append a clockwise arc (or rod) of length s to each such point. The resulting random set (the free gas of rods) is a union of a random number of clusters with random sizes modelling a free deposition process on a one-dimensional substrate. A variant of this model is investigated in order to take into account the role of the disorder, θ > 0; this involves Dirichlet(θ) distributions. For such free deposition processes with disorder θ, we shall be interested in the occurrence times and probabilities, as n grows, of two specific types of configurations: those avoiding overlapping rods (the hard-rod gas) and those for which the largest gap is smaller than the rod length s (the packing gas). Special attention is paid to the thermodynamic limit when ns = ρ for some finite density ρ of points. The occurrence of parking configurations, those for which hard-rod and packing constraints are both fulfilled, is then studied. Finally, some aspects of these problems are investigated in the low-disorder limit θ ↓ 0 as n ↑ ∞ while nθ = γ > 0. Here, Poisson-Dirichlet(γ) partitions play some role.

It is shown that the time to ruin and the recovery time in a risk process have the same distribution as the busy period in a certain queueing system. Similarly, the deficit at the time of ruin is distributed as the idle period in a single-server queueing system. These duality results are exploited to derive upper bounds for the expected time to ruin and the expected recovery time as defined by Egídio dos Reis (2000). When the claim size is generally distributed, Lorden's inequality is applied to derive the bounds. When the claim-size distribution is of phase type, tighter upper bounds are derived.

We model diffusion-controlled crystal growth as an interference problem. The crystal layers grow by nucleation (initiation of crystallization centers) followed by attachment of molecules to the nucleus. A forming crystal layer completes by either spreading across the length of the crystal or by colliding with another spreading crystal layer. This model differs from the classical Johnson-Mehl-Kolmogorov model in that nucleation happens only on boundaries of a ‘seed’ crystal as opposed to nucleation from random points in a given region. Our results also differ from the limiting results found for this classical model. We use the invariant measure of an embedded Markov process to find the growth rate of the crystal in terms of the nucleation rates. Ergodic theorems are then used to derive explicit formulae for some stationary probabilities.