An Intermediate Course In Probability

This is the only book that gives a rigorous and comprehensive treatment with lots of examples, exercises, remarks on this particular level between the standard first undergraduate course and the first graduate course based on measure theory. There is no competitor to this book. The book can be used in classrooms as well as for self-study.

The purpose of this book is to provide the reader with a solid background and understanding of the basic results and methods in probability the ory before entering into more advanced courses (in probability and/or statistics). The presentation is fairly thorough and detailed with many solved examples. Several examples are solved with different methods in order to illustrate their different levels of sophistication, their pros, and their cons. The motivation for this style of exposition is that experi ence has proved that the hard part in courses of this kind usually in the application of the results and methods; to know how, when, and where to apply what; and then, technically, to solve a given problem once one knows how to proceed. Exercises are spread out along the way, and every chapter ends with a large selection of problems. Chapters I through VI focus on some central areas of what might be called pure probability theory: multivariate random variables, condi tioning, transforms, order variables, the multivariate normal distribution, and convergence. A final chapter is devoted to the Poisson process be cause of its fundamental role in the theory of stochastic processes, but also because it provides an excellent application of the results and meth ods acquired earlier in the book. As an extra bonus, several facts about this process, which are frequently more or less taken for granted, are thereby properly verified.

This textbook on the theory of probability starts from the premise that rather than being a purely mathematical discipline, probability theory is an intimate companion of statistics. The book starts with the basic tools, and goes on to cover a number of subjects in detail, including chapters on inequalities, characteristic functions and convergence. This is followed by explanations of the three main subjects in probability: the law of large numbers, the central limit theorem, and the law of the iterated logarithm. After a discussion of generalizations and extensions, the book concludes with an extensive chapter on martingales.

This text develops the necessary background in probability theory underlying diverse treatments of stochastic processes and their wide-ranging applications. In this second edition, the text has been reorganized for didactic purposes, new exercises have been added and basic theory has been expanded. General Markov dependent sequences and their convergence to equilibrium is the subject of an entirely new chapter. The introduction of conditional expectation and conditional probability very early in the text maintains the pedagogic innovation of the first edition; conditional expectation is illustrated in detail in the context of an expanded treatment of martingales, the Markov property, and the strong Markov property. Weak convergence of probabilities on metric spaces and Brownian motion are two topics to highlight. A selection of large deviation and/or concentration inequalities ranging from those of Chebyshev, Cramer–Chernoff, Bahadur–Rao, to Hoeffding have been added, with illustrative comparisons of their use in practice. This also includes a treatment of the Berry–Esseen error estimate in the central limit theorem. The authors assume mathematical maturity at a graduate level; otherwise the book is suitable for students with varying levels of background in analysis and measure theory. For the reader who needs refreshers, theorems from analysis and measure theory used in the main text are provided in comprehensive appendices, along with their proofs, for ease of reference. Rabi Bhattacharya is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Arizona. Edward Waymire is Professor of Mathematics at Oregon State University. Both authors have co-authored numerous books, including a series of four upcoming graduate textbooks in stochastic processes with applications.

This presentation of statistical methods features extensive use of graphical displays for exploring data and for displaying the analysis. The authors demonstrate how to analyze data—showing code, graphics, and accompanying computer listings. They emphasize how to construct and interpret graphs, discuss principles of graphical design, and show how tabular results are used to confirm the visual impressions derived from the graphs. Many of the graphical formats are novel and appear here for the first time in print.

Intermediate Probability is the natural extension of the author's Fundamental Probability. It details several highly important topics, from standard ones such as order statistics, multivariate normal, and convergence concepts, to more advanced ones which are usually not addressed at this mathematical level, or have never previously appeared in textbook form. The author adopts a computational approach throughout, allowing the reader to directly implement the methods, thus greatly enhancing the learning experience and clearly illustrating the applicability, strengths, and weaknesses of the theory. The book: Places great emphasis on the numeric computation of convolutions of random variables, via numeric integration, inversion theorems, fast Fourier transforms, saddlepoint approximations, and simulation. Provides introductory material to required mathematical topics such as complex numbers, Laplace and Fourier transforms, matrix algebra, confluent hypergeometric functions, digamma functions, and Bessel functions. Presents full derivation and numerous computational methods of the stable Paretian and the singly and doubly non-central distributions. A whole chapter is dedicated to mean-variance mixtures, NIG, GIG, generalized hyperbolic and numerous related distributions. A whole chapter is dedicated to nesting, generalizing, and asymmetric extensions of popular distributions, as have become popular in empirical finance and other applications. Provides all essential programming code in Matlab and R. The user-friendly style of writing and attention to detail means that self-study is easily possible, making the book ideal for senior undergraduate and graduate students of mathematics, statistics, econometrics, finance, insurance, and computer science, as well as researchers and professional statisticians working in these fields.

The author, the founder of the Greek Statistical Institute, has based this book on the two volumes of his Greek edition which has been used by over ten thousand students during the past fifteen years. It can serve as a companion text for an introductory or intermediate level probability course. Those will benefit most who have a good grasp of calculus, yet, many others, with less formal mathematical background can also benefit from the large variety of solved problems ranging from classical combinatorial problems to limit theorems and the law of iterated logarithms. It contains 329 problems with solutions as well as an addendum of over 160 exercises and certain complements of theory and problems.

An intuitive, yet precise introduction to probability theory, stochastic processes, statistical inference, and probabilistic models used in science, engineering, economics, and related fields. This is the currently used textbook for an introductory probability course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, attended by a large number of undergraduate and graduate students, and for a leading online class on the subject. The book covers the fundamentals of probability theory (probabilistic models, discrete and continuous random variables, multiple random variables, and limit theorems), which are typically part of a first course on the subject. It also contains a number of more advanced topics, including transforms, sums of random variables, a fairly detailed introduction to Bernoulli, Poisson, and Markov processes, Bayesian inference, and an introduction to classical statistics. The book strikes a balance between simplicity in exposition and sophistication in analytical reasoning. Some of the more mathematically rigorous analysis is explained intuitively in the main text, and then developed in detail (at the level of advanced calculus) in the numerous solved theoretical problems.

Taken literally, the title "All of Statistics" is an exaggeration. But in spirit, the title is apt, as the book does cover a much broader range of topics than a typical introductory book on mathematical statistics. This book is for people who want to learn probability and statistics quickly. It is suitable for graduate or advanced undergraduate students in computer science, mathematics, statistics, and related disciplines. The book includes modern topics like non-parametric curve estimation, bootstrapping, and classification, topics that are usually relegated to follow-up courses. The reader is presumed to know calculus and a little linear algebra. No previous knowledge of probability and statistics is required. Statistics, data mining, and machine learning are all concerned with collecting and analysing data.