statistics faculty at unc-ch

_______________
wsmith@stat.unc.edu

109 Smith
Fax: 919 962-1279

Walter L. Smith

Professor Emeritus


Education

B.A. (1947), M.A. (1951), Ph.D. (1953), University of Cambridge.

Faculty Positions

UNC-Chapel Hill (1954-56, 1958 - ); University of Cambridge (1956-58).

Honors and Awards

Fellow, IMS; Fellow, ASA; Member, ISI. Adams Prize, University of Cambridge; Sir Winston Churchill Overseas Fellow; Guggenheim Fellow.

Research Interests

Walter Smith has interests in applied probability, principally with inquiries concerning queues, storage systems (reservoirs), renewal processes, and related matters; but is also interested in theoretical matters to do with characteristic functions and central limit theorems and, most of all, with renewal processes and the related cumulative processes. Smith introduced some probability concepts which have been subsequently much studied, including: semi-Markov processes, quasi-Poisson processes, branching processes in random environments. At present working on density versions of the central limit theorem, the asymptotic behavior of cumulative processes, and, with a graduate student, various problems to do with storage systems, particularly when subject to periodic demands and replenishment. In recent years has also been involved in the development of scientific word-processing software.

Selected Publications:

On transient regenerative processes (with E. Murphree), Journal of Applied Probability, 23 (1986), 52-70.

EXP Express, Brooks/Cole, Pacific Grove, California (1990), 141 pp.

On two classic theorems involving the characteristic function, in "Aspects of Uncertainty" (A.F.M. Smith and P.R. Freeman, eds.), Wiley (1994), 353-366.

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