Fractal geometry is a new and promising field for researchers from different disciplines such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and medicine. It is used to model complicated natural and technical phenomena. The most convincing models contain an element of randomness so that the combination of fractal geometry and stochastics arises in between these two fields. It contains contributions by outstanding mathematicians and is meant to highlight the principal directions of research in the area. The contributors were the main speakers attending the conference "Fractal Geometry and Stochastics" held at Finsterbergen, Germany, in June 1994. This was the first international conference ever to be held on the topic. The book is addressed to mathematicians and other scientists who are interested in the mathematical theory concerning: * Fractal sets and measures * Iterated function systems * Random fractals * Fractals and dynamical systems, and * Harmonic analysis on fractals. The reader will be introduced to the most recent results in these subjects. Researchers and graduate students alike will benefit from the clear expositions.

A collection of contributions by outstanding mathematicians, highlighting the principal directions of research on the combination of fractal geometry and stochastic methods. Clear expositions introduce the most recent results and problems on these subjects and give an overview of their historical development.

Due to the rapidly increasing need for methods of data compression, quantization has become a flourishing field in signal and image processing and information theory. The same techniques are also used in statistics (cluster analysis), pattern recognition, and operations research (optimal location of service centers). The book gives the first mathematically rigorous account of the fundamental theory underlying these applications. The emphasis is on the asymptotics of quantization errors for absolutely continuous and special classes of singular probabilities (surface measures, self-similar measures) presenting some new results for the first time. Written for researchers and graduate students in probability theory the monograph is of potential interest to all people working in the disciplines mentioned above.

The second conference on Fractal Geometry and Stochastics was held at Greifs wald/Koserow, Germany from August 28 to September 2, 1998. Four years had passed after the first conference with this theme and during this period the interest in the subject had rapidly increased. More than one hundred mathematicians from twenty-two countries attended the second conference and most of them presented their newest results. Since it is impossible to collect all these contributions in a book of moderate size we decided to ask the 13 main speakers to write an account of their subject of interest. The corresponding articles are gathered in this volume. Many of them combine a sketch of the historical development with a thorough discussion of the most recent results of the fields considered. We believe that these surveys are of benefit to the readers who want to be introduced to the subject as well as to the specialists. We also think that this book reflects the main directions of research in this thriving area of mathematics. We express our gratitude to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft whose financial support enabled us to organize the conference. The Editors Introduction Fractal geometry deals with geometric objects that show a high degree of irregu larity on all levels of magnitude and, therefore, cannot be investigated by methods of classical geometry but, nevertheless, are interesting models for phenomena in physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy and other sciences."

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