Customer Reviews

Introduction to Probability and Its Applications (Statistics)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

3.5/5 stars

First off, this book does a very good job of explaining probability concepts. Examples are explained well enough and are presented in a step by step fashion so it's not particularly hard to follow along. You'll very rarely find huge paragraphs of text, which is great if you're an engineer but bad if you're a math major. I'm docking 1/2 star because this book sometimes doesn't give enough information about a concept and how it's useful/how can it be proved.

The real reason why this book deserves 1 full star lost though is the exercises. The solutions in the back of the book are *terrible*. Not only are the "answers" incorrect, but in some cases the question would have 4 parts, but the answer would only have 3 parts. It's as though no one even bothered to cross check the questions and answers before putting this to print? I'd forgive them if this was 1 or 2 scattered problems, but it really ended up being every other problem with a mistake, in every chapter. It's extremely frustrating to take time trying to find a mistake you made, only to realize it's the book that made the mistake.

So, in summary,this book is a good "intro" book...probably best suited for engineers. If you want a book that goes through long proofs of various formulas, look elsewhere.

This book was required for a class I took, but I wish the teacher had selected a different one. The material that this covers is pretty clear most of the time, but when you go to work on the homework problems watch out. As if doing probability problems is not difficult enough, some problems in this book are misleading and if you go to check your work in the back of the book you will find that for a handful of problems in each section the answer is wrong. I compared my answer with other students and the teacher to verify this. All in all this is an ok book, but it makes you second guess yourself.

This was part of a school project for me.
The book is well written and easy to follow. It has plenty of good examples and makes for a good self-study as well.

The book was totally highlighted hot pink inside. It also smelled damp when I took the textbook from the bubble wrap envelope. It smelled like it had mold buildup.