Comprehensive, yet concise, this textbook is the go-to guide to learn why probability is so important and its applications.

Probability has applications in many areas of modern science, not to mention in our daily life. Its importance as a mathematical discipline cannot be overrated, and it is a fascinating and surprising topic in its own right. This engaging textbook with its easy-to-follow writing style provides a comprehensive yet concise introduction to the subject. It covers all of the standard material for undergraduate and first-year-graduate-level courses as well as many topics that are usually not found in standard texts, such as Bayesian inference, Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation, and Chernoff bounds.

In this fully revised second edition of Understanding Probability, the reader can learn about the world of probability in an informal way. The author demystifies the law of large numbers, betting systems, random walks, the bootstrap, rare events, the central limit theorem, the Bayesian approach and more. This second edition has wider coverage, more explanations and examples and exercises, and a new chapter introducing Markov chains, making it a great choice for a first probability course. But its easy-going style makes it just as valuable if you want to learn about the subject on your own, and high school algebra is really all the mathematical background you need.

Understanding Probability is a unique and stimulating approach to a first course in probability. The first part of the book demystifies probability and uses many wonderful probability applications from everyday life to help the reader develop a feel for probabilities. The second part, covering a wide range of topics, teaches clearly and simply the basics of probability. This fully revised third edition has been packed with even more exercises and examples and it includes new sections on Bayesian inference, Markov chain Monte-Carlo simulation, hitting probabilities in random walks and Brownian motion, and a new chapter on continuous-time Markov chains with applications. Here you will find all the material taught in an introductory probability course. The first part of the book, with its easy-going style, can be read by anybody with a reasonable background in high school mathematics. The second part of the book requires a basic course in calculus.

This classroom-tested textbook is an introduction to probability theory, with the right balance between mathematical precision, probabilistic intuition, and concrete applications. Introduction to Probability covers the material precisely, while avoiding excessive technical details. After introducing the basic vocabulary of randomness, including events, probabilities, and random variables, the text offers the reader a first glimpse of the major theorems of the subject: the law of large numbers and the central limit theorem. The important probability distributions are introduced organically as they arise from applications. The discrete and continuous sides of probability are treated together to emphasize their similarities. Intended for students with a calculus background, the text teaches not only the nuts and bolts of probability theory and how to solve specific problems, but also why the methods of solution work.

An integrated package of powerful probabilistic tools and key applications in modern mathematical data science.

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.