Customer Reviews

First Course in Probability, A (5th Edition)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I'm an electrical engineer, not a statistician. It's tough because the teachers of these EE classes dealing with noise and random variables pretend you have a background in statistics. It's got to be one of the hardest mountains to climb in the first year of graduate school. Sheldon Ross deserves a Nobel Prize for this book. By the way, this was not our textbook. We were forced to buy Papoulis (which sucks). The book is filled with examples. He has three sets of exercises in the back of each chapter: problems, theoretical exercises, and self-test problems and exercises. He gives selected answers and shows some fully worked out. Every class in America should be using this book. I bought it as a study aid based on the comments of fellow Amazons, and I was not dissappointed. In fact I had to come back and give it my highest recommendation.

Note: If you are going to criticize this book as I see many are falling into, you need to show me another one that is better. That is the entire point here. There isn't one. Search the entire Library of Congress to find a better one and let us all know what it is. Thank you.

My first reaction to this book was that the problems were very, very difficult to solve, and I believed that it was mainly do to the author's fault of not presenting effective methods for handling the problems in a step by step manner. However, I now believe that after reading more texts on the subject, that introductory level probability problems, in general, require a greater deal of mathematical reasoning and careful application of the rules of probability than do other introductory problems in the realms of calculus and physics where the problems are of a 'plug-in' nature. So in defense of Dr. Ross, I must say that his text is well thought out with interesting, careful examples and written concisely and fluently (if at times somewhat condescending on the reader).

Don't relate to previous reviewers' problems with this book: CLEAR though concise presentation of material, interesting examples. MOst of all: there is almost no hand-waiving in this book (it does occur somehwat in the discussion of limit theorems most memorably), that is, everything is proven. If your math level is up to par (good calculus foundation) then this is the best book for introductory (non-measure theory) prob. that I know of.

I entered a junior level probability course with an open mind because of the many applications of probability distributions to chemistry and physics. However, after taking the probability course and using this book, I have grown to seriously dislike the topic. I was not impressed with this book at all. I agree with others that the explanations and theory presented in the text do not provide enough information to complete the Theoretical Exercises at the end of each chapter. I think the course could have been every interesting and enlighting had it not been for this book.

Some other reviewer said Sheldon Ross deserves a Nobel Prize for this book, but that's a gross overstatement. Another reviewer said he'll burn the book, but it's not that bad either. It's a fairly typical intro book that's neither particularly good nor bad. The problems were at an appropriate level and were definitely doable if reasonable time was put in. Ross explains the concepts decently well, but I found William Feller's Intro to Mathematical Probability a much better presentation of the material. The part that I despised about Ross is his exposition of various types of random variables. This was the part where the book got truly boring, since his style was "this is binomial. got it? this is possion. ok. and this is exponential." There was no sense of flow or connection. For this I give him 2 stars although I would have given him 3 otherwise.

The book writes a paragraph of theorectical explanations and then dives into a plethora of examples. The examples are good, but learning by example doesn't alway cut it.

Ross uses awkward notation and gives too many non-relevant examples. The problems are plentiful, but he doesn't give the reader a feel that the tools of probabilty are very practical in nature. He comes across as though mathematics were just an idle exercise for a bored intellectual. He could do much better in his explanations in a revision.

I used this textbook for a junior level introductiory probabilitycourse. The only good thing about this book is that it has a lot ofexamples. But that's all it's got! The book doensn't do a very goodjob explaining the theory. If you are just looking for practiceexamples, then this is the book for you. I wish it did a better jobwith the explaination of the theory.

This is a fantastic text that is aimed at those who are interested in applications and not theory. The book is loaded with examples most of which have detailed solutions that are clear and easy to understand. I must stress that this book is very light on theory (though each chapter contains difficult "theoretical exercises"), and is not a sufficient text for anything but an introductory course.

The chapter on combinatorics really simplifies the evaluation of various proofs, especially binomial and multinomial coefficients and distributions.