Differential geometry and statistics

M.K. Murray, J.W. Rice9780412398605, 0412398605

Ever since the introduction by Rao in 1945 of the Fisher information metric on a family of probability distributions there has been interest among statisticians in the application of differential geometry to statistics. This interest has increased rapidly in the last couple of decades with the work of a large number of researchers. Until now an impediment to the spread of these ideas into the wider community of statisticians is the lack of a suitable text introducing the modern co-ordinate free approach to differential geometry in a manner accessible to statisticians. This book aims to fill this gap. The authors bring to the book extensive research experience in differential geometry and its application to statistics. The book commences with the study of the simplest differential manifolds – affine spaces and their relevance to exponential families and passes into the general theory, the Fisher information metric, the Amari connection and asymptotics. It culminates in the theory of the vector bundles, principle bundles and jets and their application to the theory of strings – a topic presently at the cutting edge of research in statistics and differential geometry.