Fundamentals of Markov Chains

Markov chains have extensively been dealt with in refs.[2-8, 15-18, 84], mainly by mathematicians. Based on the material of these articles and books, a coherent and a short distillate is presented in the following. The detailed mathematics is avoided and numerous examples are presented, demonstrating the potential of the Markov-chain method. Distinction has been made with respect to processes discrete in time and space, processes discrete in space and continuous in time as well as processes continuous in space and time. 

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The organization of the book is as follows. The fundamentals of Markov chains will be presented in Chapter 2 in an easy and understandable form where complex... 

The fundamentals of Markov chains have been presented in an easy and understandable form where complex mathematical derivations are abandoned on the one hand, and numerous examples are presented on the other. Despite of the simplifications made, the author believes that the needed tools have been provided to the reader so that he can solve complicated problems in reactors, reactions, reactor plus reactions and other processes encountered in Chemical Engineering, where Markov chains may provide a useful tool. 

I believe that Markov chains have not yet acquired their appropriate status in the Chemical Engineering textbooks although the method has proven very effective and simple for solving complex processes. Thus, the major objective of writing this book has been to try to change this situation. The book has been written in an easy and understandable form where complex mathematical derivations are abandoned. The demonstration of the fundamentals of Markov chains in Chapter 2 has been done with examples from the bible, art and real life problems. The majority of the book contains an extremely wide collection of examples viz.. 

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