Probabilistic Metric Spaces

Book excerpt: This distinctly nonclassical treatment focuses on developing aspects that differ from the theory of ordinary metric spaces, working directly with probability distribution functions rather than random variables. The two-part treatment begins with an overview that discusses the theory's historical evolution, followed by a development of related mathematical machinery. The presentation defines all needed concepts, states all necessary results, and provides relevant proofs. The second part opens with definitions of probabilistic metric spaces and proceeds to examinations of special classes of probabilistic metric spaces, topologies, and several related structures, such as probabilistic normed and inner-product spaces. Throughout, the authors focus on developing aspects that differ from the theory of ordinary metric spaces, rather than simply transferring known metric space results to a more general setting.