Customer Reviews

A First Course in Probability

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First all, everyone wishing to learn probability comes from different background, math level, and motivation. There is no book that suits all. Recently I needed to know something about moment generating functions. With all my advanced engineering background though, I find it difficult to get into probability.

So I bought the following supposedly introductory texts: Ross, DeGroot, Stirzaker, Bersekas & Tsitsiklis. To me, Ross seems like a review lesson to cram for finals; it's choke full of examples but fairly spare in exposition. DeGroot is the opposite, long on descriptions but short on examples; by the time it finishes describing the problem, you have forgotten how to solve it. Probability is set up more as a prelude to statistics in the second half of the book. Stirzaker calls his book "elementary" the way Sherlock Holmes dismissed a case after slogging all night through the English bogs. It is more for the well-drilled boys from elite British "public" (private actually) schools. Bersekas comes closest to what I look for in a text, straightforward in prose with a judicious selection of examples to explain theory.

For beginners, the best approach I found, in the end, was to go the local community college and buy the text used for Finite Math. Usually, there are 3 to 4 chapters that introduce probability.

Such a text is aimed an audience from wider academic and language backgrounds, as community colleges are mandated to do. Therefore, probability is taught in simple, plain-spoken language crafted through multiple editions. One such is Finite Math, by Karl J. Smith; however, many others like it will do. For self-study, one might start in the chapter on probability to understand the author's approach, then go back a chapter or two to pick up the permutation and combinatorial math needed to calculate probability. Another alternative is just to enroll in a Finite Math course at a community college. Generally, such a course stops at Markov's chain which is enough to get you jump started in probability.

In any case, a good Finite Math text gives plenty of examples with clear, succinct, and layman-like explanation to help you tackle Ross' book or supplement any other at a higher level. If you plan to apply probability to your work, then shop around for another text after you get the basics. The thicker tomes delve more into theory which is good because real life problems are seldom like the examples given. However you can't go wrong by planting your feet solidly on a good Finite Math text first

This book is terrible! I don't understand how it's "A First Course". Good luck answering the questions with only the info provided in the chapters. You'll have to spend countless hours consulting your TA or the internet to figure out the answers. Garbage.

I found that Chapters 1 through 5 (Cominatorial analysis, axioms, Conditional Prob, Discreet RVs, Contious RVs) were very good. Everything else got a little confusing. After reading these later chapters, I found I could complete a little over half of the excercise in these back of these chapters, but some problems I couldn't solve no matter how much time I spent on them. It seemed some excercises were completely different than the examples in the chapters. I'm sure a solutions manual would have cleared everything up though.