Unimodality, Convexity, and Applications

In this book, the basic notions and tools of unimodality as they relate to probability and statistics are presented. In addition, many applications are covered; these include the use of unimodality to obtain monotonicity properties of power functions of multivariate tests, minimum volume confidence regions, and recurrence of symmetric random walks. The diversity of the applications will convince the reader that unimodality and convexity form an important tool in the hands of a researcher in probability and statistics.

Properties of Univariate Unimodal Distributions. Concepts of Multivariate Unimodality. Some More Notions of Unimodality. Unimodality for Discrete Distributions. Unimodality of Infinitely Divisible Distributions. Unimodality and Notions of Dependence. Ordering of Distributions by Peakedness. Applications of Unimodality in Statistical Inference. Convexity in Reliability Theory. Appendix.