Andrey Markov was a mathematician who was interested in randomness. In the jargon of probability theory, a mathematical object defined by a set of random variables is known as a ‘stochastic process’. Markov became interested in how much you could know about a stochastic process, and in his research he developed a model we now call the ‘Markov process’ – some people refer to it as a ‘Markov chain’. The Markov process examines the state of a system at a given time and attempts to project the next state of that system based on existing relationships.
