This volume consists of fifteen articles mainly based upon presentations given at AMS Special Sessions at Joint Mathematics Meetings during 2022-2025. Sample topics include: the advantage of serving first in a pickleball match, variance calculations in Texas hold'em and video poker, a mathematical introduction to data modeling and decision making, transient symmetry analysis of absorbed random walks on integer lattices, and finding explicit transient probabilities within various Markov models. Among authors of articles in the volume are well-known mathematicians such as William A. Massey, Stewart N. Ethier, and Sheldon M. Ross.
Alan Krinik, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA. Randall J. Swift, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA. Jennifer M. Switkes, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA
Articles; Daryl R. DeFord and Stewart N. Ethier, Does the first-serving team have a structural advantage in pickleball?; Stewart N. Ethier, Variance reduction in Texas hold'em and in video poker; Pawel Lorek, Transient probabilities in partially ordered Markov models: Duality-based methods; William A. Massey, Jamol J. Pender and Jhevon Smith, A transient symmetry analysis for absorbed random walks on two-dimensional integer lattices; William A. Massey, Jamol J. Pender and Jhevon Smith, A transient symmetry analysis for absorbed random walks on multi-dimensional integer lattices; Hubertus von Bremen, Alan Krinik and Theodore De Santos, Diagonalization, powers and the exponential of special pentadiagonal and heptadiagonal matrices; Hubertus von Bremen and Alan Krinik, Powers and the exponential of some special banded matrices; Theodore De Santos, Hubertus von Bremen and Alan Krinik, Explicit transient probabilities of Markov chains having mainly transition step sizes of 0 or $\pm \hspace {1mm}t$; Xiao Xiao Cui, Alan Krinik and Randall J. Swift, Eigenvalues of symmetric Toeplitz pentadiagonal matrices; Barbara Haas Margolius, A quasi-birth-death process gambler's ruin problem in continuous time; David Siegmund, Ruin probabilities and applications; Aradhana Soni and Anant Godbole, Statistical properties of the first passage to the origin distribution; Gisele Ruiz Goldstein, Jerome A. Goldstein and Ismail Kombe, Non-existence results for nonlinear parabolic problems on the Heisenberg group $\mathbb {H}^n$; Sheldon M. Ross, Finding the best player via multi-player comparisons; Jean A. Guillaume and William A. Massey, A mathematical introduction to data modeling and decision engineering