Customer Reviews

Understanding Probability and Statistics: A Book of Problems

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Falk gives a varied and intriguing selection of problems (with scrupulous credit to the original sources) and explains the more challenging of them in helpful detail. Classical problems in the field (Pascal, Galileo) are included along with more recent ones (the Monty Hall perplexity). The invented problems are judicious and relevant. I warmly recommend this book to self-students like myself.

My one reservation is that Falk sometimes seems to introduce Bayesian "later information" considerations into problems where, by her own analysis, such information doesn't really make a difference, except on further assumptions not warranted by the problem. If so, the student's awareness of the long-running Bayesian vs Bernoullian controversy is ultimately enhanced, which is to say that the ideal reader of the book is probably an active and statistically informed student of the subject.

As promised in the Preface, the mathematical requirements are kept reasonably low, and except for the multiple choice quiz in Chapters 4 and 5, the problem solving approach is followed throughout, so that the book can be read independently of a regular statistics course.