From the reviews: "Overall, this is a stimulating book. As it says, the discrete-time framework has been underused in the past in the view of the fact that much real data in practice (I would even say most) is recorded in discrete time. Also, the applications listed, particularly the DNA sequencing, are important ad timely." (Martin Crowder, International Statistical ... Read moreReview 2009, 77, 2) "Barbu and Limnios’s goal is to present a complete picture of the basic theory of finite state space semi-Markov processes in discrete time, describe its applications to reliability and DNA analysis, and obtain estimation results for hidden semi-Markov models (HSSM). … Each chapter contains several exercises. There are five appendices that render the book self-contained. … I highly recommend this book for applied probabilists and statisticians interested in reliability and DNA analysis, and for theoretically oriented reliability and bioinformatics engineers." (P. R. Parthasarathy, ACM Computing Reviews, March, 2009) “…this book will be useful as  a reference for researchers interested in discrete-time semi-Markov and hidden semi-Markov processes…” (Biometrics 65, 1312, December 2009) Show Less