Probabilistic Data-Driven Modeling

Tomaso Aste is Professor of Complexity Science at the Computer Science Department at University College London. A trained physicist, he has substantially contributed to research in complex systems modeling, from materials to markets. He has authored over 300 research papers and several books and collaborated with over 100 researchers across all continents. Professor Aste is founder and Head of the Financial Computing and Analytics Group at UCL, he is founder and editor-in-chief of the journal Data-Driven Modelling.

• List of symbols; Preface; Part I. Preliminary: 1. Introduction; 2. Fundamentals of Probability; 3. Fundamentals of machine learning; 4. Fundamentals of networks; Part II. Foundations of Probabilistic Modeling: 5. Univariate probabilities; 6. Multivariate probabilities; 7. Entropies; 8. Dependence; 9. Stochastic processes and scaling laws; 10. Causation; 11. Networks as representations of complex systems; 12. Probabilistic modeling with network representations; Part III. Model Construction from Data: 13. Nonparametric estimation of univariate probabilities from data; 14. Parametric estimation of univariate probabilities from data; 15. Estimation of multivariate probabilities from data; 16. Time series and probabilistic modeling; 17. Construction of network representations from data; 18. Assessing the goodness of models; Part IV. Closing: 19. Conclusions; Part V. Appendices: Appendix A. Essentials on probability theory; Appendix B. Finding roots of non-linear equations; Appendix C. Some optimization problems and methods; Appendix D. Principal components analysis; Appendix E. Random forest; Appendix F. Expectation maximization (EM); Appendix G. Bad modeling; References; Index.

'I really enjoyed reading this book. It offers an expansive tour to the realm of probabilistic data-driven systems modeling, as well as an easily accessible reference for those, such as students, researchers and practitioners, aiming to understand the nature and behaviors of complex systems, as often encountered in the real world.' Jiming Liu, Hong Kong Baptist University