Reddit Reddit reviews A First Course in Probability (9th Edition)

We found 6 Reddit comments about A First Course in Probability (9th Edition). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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6 Reddit comments about A First Course in Probability (9th Edition):

u/4ngry4vian · 8 pointsr/statistics

For undergrad probability, Pitman's book or Ross's two books here and here.

For graduate probability, Billingsley (h/t /u/DCI_John_Luther), Williams or Durrett.

u/luckycharms159 · 4 pointsr/math
  1. Ross - First Course in Probability (Calculus based probability, undergraduate level, good introduction to probability)

    http://www.amazon.com/First-Course-Probability-9th-Edition/dp/032179477X

  2. Rice - Mathematical Statistics (introduction to statistics, focuses on applications with data, great book, includes good probability review)

    http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Statistics-Analysis-Available-Enhanced/dp/0534399428

  3. Billingsley - Probability and Measure (graduate, measure-theoretic probability)

    http://www.amazon.com/Probability-Measure-Patrick-Billingsley/dp/1118122372

  4. Bickel & Doksum - Mathematical Statistics (graduate level statistical theory, much more theoretical than Rice, can be a difficult book to learn from but it is a great reference)

    http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Statistics-Selected-Topics-Edition/dp/0132306379

    EDIT:

    Most likely Rice will be the best book for a comprehensive look at prob/stat, and it is sufficiently technical.
u/TheStudyOf_Wumbo · 4 pointsr/UofT

In my opinion the hardest part of the course is the first 3 weeks, and the last 3-4 weeks.

FIRST THREE WEEKS:

Probability at first was extremely confusing, and in some ways still is a bit confusing for me since I almost never use it and forget stuff over time. You may be like me in this regard, the reason I always would get tricked by probability is there are cases where the wrong answer just seems like pure common sense (until you learn probability better) which will leads you down a very wrong path because you are convincing yourself you're right when you are not. The trick I found for myself was to aggressively do every problem I could get my hands on and understand exactly why I was wrong. I went through 2-3 different textbooks outside of the course and only then finally started to understand how to think in a probabilistic way whereby the tricks that tend to destroy people on exams and such would not catch me off guard.

The textbook for the course (Grinstead and Snell? I may be spelling this wrong) was extremely verbose and I started reading elsewhere out of boredom, in retrospect I regret this decision since it was the closest book to all the topics covered in 247.

The lecturer felt like he threw examples at us (I assume this is your complaint too?) and my biggest mistake in that course was not spending ample amounts of time understanding exactly why they worked. Despite this, what he did explain was good and I liked his teaching a lot, but I had to go to office hours to understand things that were vague in lectures.

As an example, do you know why the permutation formula is defined the way it is? Do you know why n choose k is defined the way it is, or rather, how can you get to the formula for n choose k if you know the permutation formula?

The unfortunate thing is it took me going through books like A First Course in Probability, which is probably insane to go through if you aren't comfortable with math/proofs/some stats already despite the book name... but the massive amount of examples gave me some pretty huge insights. I did this for I think 1-2 other books, and then I read the textbook for the course. It was not easy, you will invest probably 2x the work of any other class if you try what I did, and I didn't even do as much as I'm telling you here and tried half of this after the course.

The best thing you may be able to do if you're like me is just practice more and more problems, make sure you fully understand exactly why you were wrong if so, and double confirm why you were right just to make sure you didn't arrive on the answer via some fluke -- which I actually had happen to me on the midterm and gave me an over-inflated mark because... luck. You must understand every detail of why the formula exists the way that it does. I say this because the amount of dumb tricks on the midterms will not be pleasant if you get caught up on "am I actually right?" like I do and choke.

Also the fact that each question on the midterm was 1-2% of your mark also caused a great deal of stress, and I don't perform too well under it.


LAST n-1 TO n-4 WEEKS:

I rushed moment generating functions because I fucked up my study time when CSC236 came around for midterms and shallowly understood them as a result. This was a mistake, so don't do this. It's quite cool what you can do with it actually so let that inspire you.

Chapter 9 (or the last few weeks minus the very last week) was double integration with stuff, and I was not only extremely rusty at this but unable to find any external practice whatsoever. I went through the entire lectures having no clue why we were doing it, and due to a severe lack of time I memorized a ton of formulas instead of understanding... and paid the price on the final for that very reason (causing me to drop from an A-/A to a B, which pissed me off tremendously and was all my fault).

The very last unit which was Markov Chains for me was common sense and extremely interesting, and the exam questions were very straightforward with no tricks... or so it seemed...

And that is my experience with the course.

That class average was the lowest out of every course I've ever had, also was my lowest mark too, I wish I spent more time understanding. I found the middle weeks (mainly 3 - 6) to be straight forward and number crunchy with a lot more intuition, but you'll likely still have to haul ass for that section too if its your first time looking at that.

Maybe I would have had better luck in STA257 if they go into deeper understand of why with proofs, I don't know...

u/Jimmy_Goose · 3 pointsr/statistics

Ross is the standard probability book. Its on its 9th edition, so it most likely has few typos (I have the 5th, and that was a solid book). Also, you can probably (get it?) find an older edition for next to nothing.

u/RutgersThrowaway97 · 1 pointr/rutgers

I believe those were the books used during the 2016-2017 school year (thats when I took discrete II)

From what I understand now, the newest renditions of the course use

Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications by K. Rosen

and

A First Course in Probability by Ross

But it'll depend entirely on who it is that's offering the course during the summer and what they include on their syllabus so I'd wait until seeing what they say to purchase either of the books.

The first book you listed (Mathematics for Computer science) is available for free for anyone to use here

The second is available for free on the Rutgers libraries website so I'd advise you not waste your money buying either of those two.

Hope this helps

u/o_safadinho · 1 pointr/learnmath

A First Course in Probability Theory by Sheldon Ross is the book that was used in my undergrad class. The book is currently on the 9th edition, but you can pick up a copy of the 7th edition in like new condition for under $15 plus shipping.

This is also one of the books that is suggested by the Society of Actuaries for the Probability (P) exam.