PROBABILITY MEASURES ON SEMIGROUPS - COVOLUTION PRODUCTS, RANDOM WALKS AND RANDOM MATRICES

''A well-written book...This is elegant mathematics, motivated by examples and presented in an accessible way that engages the reader.'' --- International Statistics Institute, December 1996 ''This beautiful book...guides the reader through the most important developments...a valuable addition to the library of the probabilist, and a must for anybody interested in probability on algebraic structures.'' --- Zentrallblatt fur Mathematik und ihre Grenzgebiete--Mathematical Abstracts ''This well-written volume, by two of the most successful workers in the field....deserves to become the standard introduction for beginning researchers in this field.'' --- Journal Royal Statistical Society The authors present up-to-date information on the theory of weak convergence of convolution products of probability measures on semigroups, the theory of random walks on semigroups, and their applications to products of random matrices. In addition, this unique work examines the essentials of abstract semigroup theory and its application to concrete semigroups of matrices. Graduate students as well as researchers in pure and applied mathematics will appreciate this well-illustrated work.