The planet earth is rich in carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen; it is third from the sun in an orbit that delivers just the right amount of heat and light; and it travels through space with a thin shell of protective ozone that has been crucial to the evolution of terrestrial-based organisms. Our environment has in recent times been seen as delicate and not to be taken for granted. The study of the i...

1. For a discrete process convolution model with unknown kernel parameters, linear trend, and inverse gamma priors on the variance parameters, write the full conditionals and indicate how to perform the calculations needed to sample from them. In matrix form, we have y = X(s)β + K(s, ψ)w + , where x(s i) is the i-th row of X(s), K ij = k ij = k(s i − u j ; ψ). With the assumption that p(w, β, τ...

As spatial datasets are becoming increasingly large and unwieldy, exact inference on models becomes computationally prohibitive. Various approximation methods have been proposed to reduce the computational burden. Although comprehensive reviews these exist, comparisons of their performances limited small medium sizes for a few selected methods. To achieve comparison comprising as many possible,...