Explosive growth in computing power has made Bayesian methods for infinite-dimensional models - Bayesian nonparametrics - a nearly universal framework for inference, finding practical use in numerous subject areas. Written by leading researchers, this authoritative text draws on theoretical advances of the past twenty years to synthesize all aspects of Bayesian nonparametrics, from prior construction to computation and large sample behavior of posteriors. Because understanding the behavior of posteriors is critical to selecting priors that work, the large sample theory is developed systematically, illustrated by various examples of model and prior combinations. Precise sufficient conditions are given, with complete proofs, that ensure desirable posterior properties and behavior. Each chapter ends with historical notes and numerous exercises to deepen and consolidate the reader's understanding, making the book valuable for both graduate students and researchers in statistics and machine learning, as well as in application areas such as econometrics and biostatistics.

This book explores weak convergence theory and empirical processes and their applications to many applications in statistics. Part one reviews stochastic convergence in its various forms. Part two offers the theory of empirical processes in a form accessible to statisticians and probabilists. Part three covers a range of topics demonstrating the applicability of the theory to key questions such as measures of goodness of fit and the bootstrap.

This new volume of the long-established St. Flour Summer School of Probability includes the notes of the three major lecture courses by Erwin Bolthausen on "Large Deviations and Iterating Random Walks", by Edwin Perkins on "Dawson-Watanabe Superprocesses and Measure-Valued Diffusions", and by Aad van der Vaart on "Semiparametric Statistics".