This book helps advanced undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students in their daily work by offering them a compendium of numerical methods. The choice of methods pays significant attention to error estimates, stability and convergence issues as well as to the ways to optimize program execution speeds. Many examples are given throughout the chapters, and each chapter is followed by at least a handful of more comprehensive problems which may be dealt with, for example, on a weekly basis in a one- or two-semester course. In these end-of-chapter problems the physics background is pronounced, and the main text preceding them is intended as an introduction or as a later reference. Less stress is given to the explanation of individual algorithms. It is tried to induce in the reader an own independent thinking and a certain amount of scepticism and scrutiny instead of blindly following readily available commercial tools.

This book is designed as a practical and intuitive introduction to probability, statistics and random quantities for physicists. The book aims at getting to the main points by a clear, hands-on exposition supported by well-illustrated and worked-out examples. A strong focus on applications in physics and other natural sciences is maintained throughout. In addition to basic concepts of random variables, distributions, expected values and statistics, the book discusses the notions of entropy, Markov processes, and fundamentals of random number generation and Monte-Carlo methods.

In this Supplement we have collected the invited and contributed talks pre sented at the XVIII European Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics, organised by the Jozef Stefan Institute and the University of Ljubljana, Slove nia. The Conference, sponsored by the European Physical Society, took place at the lakeside resort of Bled from 8 to 14 September, 2002. This meeting was a part of the series of European Few-Body Conferences, previously held in Evora/Portugal (2000), Autrans/France (1998), Peniscola/Spain (1995), ... Our aim was to emphasise, to a larger extent than at previous Conferences, the interdisciplinarity of research fields of the Few-Body community. To pro mote a richer exchange of ideas, we therefore strived to avoid parallel sessions as much as possible. On the other hand, to promote the participation of young scientists who we feel will eventually shape the future of Few-Body Physics, we wished to give almost all attendees the opportunity to speak."

This book is intended to help advanced undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students in their daily work by offering them a compendium of numerical methods. The choice of methods pays significant attention to error estimates, stability and convergence issues, as well as optimization of program execution speeds. Numerous examples are given throughout the chapters, followed by comprehensive end-of-chapter problems with a more pronounced physics background, while less stress is given to the explanation of individual algorithms. The readers are encouraged to develop a certain amount of skepticism and scrutiny instead of blindly following readily available commercial tools. The second edition has been enriched by a chapter on inverse problems dealing with the solution of integral equations, inverse Sturm-Liouville problems, as well as retrospective and recovery problems for partial differential equations. The revised text now includes an introduction to sparse matrix methods, the solution of matrix equations, and pseudospectra of matrices; it discusses the sparse Fourier, non-uniform Fourier and discrete wavelet transformations, the basics of non-linear regression and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test; it demonstrates the key concepts in solving stiff differential equations and the asymptotics of Sturm-Liouville eigenvalues and eigenfunctions. Among other updates, it also presents the techniques of state-space reconstruction, methods to calculate the matrix exponential, generate random permutations and compute stable derivatives.

This book is designed as a practical and intuitive introduction to probability, statistics and random quantities for physicists. The book aims at getting to the main points by a clear, hands-on exposition supported by well-illustrated and worked-out examples. A strong focus on applications in physics and other natural sciences is maintained throughout. In addition to basic concepts of random variables, distributions, expected values and statistics, the book discusses the notions of entropy, Markov processes, and fundamentals of random number generation and Monte-Carlo methods.