On the product of symmetric random variables

Let X and Y be two independent and nondegenerate random variables such that X is symmetric about a and Y is symmetric about b. It is shown that XY is symmetric about ab if and only if ab= 0.     

Bayes empirical Bayes estimation for discrete exponential families

Bayes-empiric Bayes estimation of the parameter of certain one parameter discrete exponential families based on orthogonal polynomials on an interval (a, b) is introduced. The resulting estimator is shown to be asymptotically optimal. The application of this method to three special distributions, the binomial, Poisson and negative binomial, is discussed.The first author was supported by NSF grant DCR-8504620.     

Conservative methods for the Toda lattice equations

We are concerned with the numerical integration of the Todalattice equations by using different conservative methods. Numericalexperiments suggest that the global error for isospectral schemesdecreases exponentially with time but it is almost constantfor either symplectic or more general integrators. We providea theoretical explanation for these experimental findings.