Purpose – This editorial aims to consider certain aspects of the parallel development of statistics and actuarial science that are instructive in understanding the value of intellectual cross-fertilization in research. Design/methodology/approach – The paper addresses the fundamental problem...

Purpose – The purpose of this two‐part series is to consider the role of the “scientific method” (SM) in human understanding, questioning both its consistency in actual practice and its reasonableness as a system of philosophy and action. Design/methodology/approach – Part 2 considers...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to suggest a framework for sales forecasting more suitable for smaller firms. The authors examine the sales forecasting practices of small firms and then proceed to discuss the application of Bayesian decision theory in the production of sales forecasts,...

Purpose – The purpose of this two-part series is to consider the role of the “scientific method” (SM) in human understanding, questioning both its consistency in actual practice and its reasonableness as a system of philosophy and action. Design/methodology/approach – Part 2 considers...

This project studied the feasibility of constructing an autonomous vehicle controller based on probabilistic inference and utility maximization. Several theoretical and algorithmic advances were required in order to create an inference system capable of handling vehicle monitoring in a real-time...

In this research, the authors introduce and define a universal incident detection framework that is capable of fulfilling all components of a set of recognized needs. An algorithm is presented that has the potential to fulfill the defined universality requirements. It is a modified form of a...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether Markov mixture of normals (MMN) model is a viable approach to modeling financial returns. Design/methodology/approach – This paper adopts the full Bayesian estimation approach based on the method of Gibbs sampling, and the latent...