For two-person zero-sum games, where the probability of each player winning is a continuous function of time and is known to both players, the mutually optimal strategy for proposing and accepting a doubling of the game value is known. We present an algorithm for deriving the optimal doubling strategy of a player who is aware of the suboptimal strategy followed by the opponent. We also present numerical results about the magnitude of the benefits; the results support the claim that repeated application of the algorithm by both players leads to the mutually optimal strategy.

This work employs the Brownian motion model in which observations are taken sequentially. The objective is to detect a two-sided change in the constant drift by means of a stopping rule. As a performance measure, an extended Lorden criterion is used. The goal is to minimize the worst-case detection delay subject to a constraint in the frequency of false alarms. In a companion paper, attention is drawn to a first category of 2-CUSUM rules for which the harmonic mean rule holds. It is further seen that a special class of 2-CUSUM stopping rules within this category, called drift equalizer rules, perform strictly better than non-equalizer rules, according to this specific performance measure.

Given a sequence of bounded random variables that satisfies a well-known mixing condition, it is shown that empirical estimates of the rate function for the partial sums process satisfy the large deviation principle in the space of convex functions equipped with the Attouch-Wets topology. As an application, a large deviation principle for estimating the exponent in the tail of the queue length distribution at a single-server queue with infinite waiting space is proved.

Let denote the class of local subexponential distributions and F∗ν the ν-fold convolution of distribution F, where ν belongs to one of the following three cases: ν is a random variable taking only a finite number of values, in particular ν ≡ n for some n ≥ 2; ν is a Poisson random variable; or ν is a geometric random variable. Along the lines of Embrechts, Goldie, and Veraverbeke (1979), the following assertion is proved under certain conditions: This result is applied to the infinitely divisible laws and some new results are established. The results obtained extend the corresponding findings of Asmussen, Foss, and Korshunov (2003).

In this paper, it is shown that the Foster-Lyapunov criterion is sufficient to ensure the existence of an invariant probability measure for both discrete- and continuous-time Markov processes without any additional hypotheses (such as irreducibility).

For a GI/G/c queue, a full busy period is an interval that begins when an arrival finds c − 1 customers in the system, and ends when, for the first time after that, a departure leaves behind c − 1 customers in the system. We present a probabilistic proof of conditions for full busy periods to have finite moments. For queues that empty, this result may be deduced from results in the literature, but our proof is much easier. For queues that do not empty, our proof still applies, and this result is new.

The comparison of lifetimes has been treated extensively during the last decade. A wide variety of mathematical objects have been defined, which, in reliability theory, are used to quantify ageing properties. In this work, using the equilibrium variable, we give a new viewpoint on ageing properties. Moreover, we give new bounds on the moments of series systems.

We consider a Jackson network in which some of the nodes have an infinite supply of work: when all the customers queued at such a node have departed, the node will process a customer from this supply. Such nodes will be processing jobs all the time, so they will be fully utilized and experience a traffic intensity of 1. We calculate flow rates for such networks, obtain conditions for stability, and investigate the stationary distributions. Standard nodes in this network continue to have product-form distributions, while nodes with an infinite supply of work have geometric marginal distributions and Poisson inflows and outflows, but their joint distribution is not of product form.

We establish Klar's (2002) conjecture about sharp reliability bounds for life distributions in the ℒα-class in reliability theory. The key idea is to construct a set of two-point distributions whose support points satisfy a certain system of equalities and inequalities.

We show that a branching random walk that is supercritical on is also supercritical, in a rather strong sense, when restricted to a large enough finite ball of This implies that the critical value of branching random walks on finite balls converges to the critical value of branching random walks on as the radius increases to infinity. Our main result also implies coexistence of an arbitrary finite number of species for an ecological model.

We study the impact of service time distributions on the distribution of the maximum queue length during a busy period for the MX/G/1 queue. The maximum queue length is an important random variable to understand when designing the buffer size for finite-buffer (M/G/1/n) systems. We show the somewhat surprising result that, for three variations of the preemptive last-come–first-served discipline, the maximum queue length during a busy period is smaller when service times are more variable (in the convex sense).

In this article, we consider the limit behavior of the hazard rate function of mixture distributions, assuming knowledge of the behavior of each individual distribution. We show that the asymptotic baseline function of the hazard rate function is preserved under mixture.

We consider a random walker on a d-regular graph. Starting from a fixed vertex, the first step is a unit step in any one of the d directions, with common probability 1/d for each one. At any later step, the random walker moves in any one of the directions, with probability q for a reversal of direction and probability p for any other direction. This model was introduced and first studied by Gillis (1955), in the case when the graph is a d-dimensional square lattice. We prove that the Gillis random walk on a d-regular graph is recurrent if and only if the simple random walk on the graph is recurrent. The Green function of the Gillis random walk will be also given, in terms of that of the simple random walk.

Positive correlations for extinction probabilities in the contact process are used to obtain rigorous lower bounds.