'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

Post by Jaeger »

I've just finished a class in probability, but it was a very condensed 6 week course so I didn't learn the material as well as I wanted to; I kindda want to get a better book and go over a lot of the material again.

For book reccomandations I've seen A First Course in Probability by Sheldon Ross, but before I buy it I wanted to know if anyone else had other ideas.

If you did use the book in the title, I would like to know:

1) What is your opinion of the book?
2) Are there big differences between the 7th and 8th editions? The 7th is cheaper.
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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@Aizamk has a masters in Actuarial Science maybe he knows
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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deleted_user wrote:@Aizamk has a masters in Actuarial Science maybe he knows

OOOOOO Aiz-sensei!!!!!!
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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ovi12 wrote:
deleted_user wrote:@Aizamk has a masters in Actuarial Science maybe he knows

OOOOOO Aiz-sensei!!!!!!

I didn't use this book at all (or any other textbooks) in my undergrad maths and stats, nor in my actuarial masters. Just had lecture notes really, so can't help much on this subject. What scope of probability does it cover?
oranges.
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

Post by Jaeger »

Aizamk wrote:
ovi12 wrote:
deleted_user wrote:@Aizamk has a masters in Actuarial Science maybe he knows

OOOOOO Aiz-sensei!!!!!!

I didn't use this book at all (or any other textbooks) in my undergrad maths and stats, nor in my actuarial masters. Just had lecture notes really, so can't help much on this subject. What scope of probability does it cover?

Waw, elifent must have veri guud memory for no need textbook. Was this normal at your university? I would imagine it's terrible to not have textbooks; now if you want to review something do you have to dig through all your notes?

I don't write any notes in class, because if I do I get lost very quickly. I watch the whole lecture carefully and I read from the book if I forget something.

The chapters in Sheldon Ross's are:

1) Combinatorial Analysis
2) Axioms of probability
3) Conditional probability and independence
4) Randon Variables
5) Continuous Random Variables
6) Jointly Distributed Random Variables
7) Propreties of Expectation
8) Limit Theorems
9) Additional Topics in Probability
10) Simulation
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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From my perspective I would guess that after just a six week course any standard book on probability would be helpful and informative to you Ovi. Perhaps you could ask a professor an the university for a recommendation or find a syllabus online for a similar course at a prestigious colleges.
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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Is the "Martingale" system viable?
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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deleted_user wrote:From my perspective I would guess that after just a six week course any standard book on probability would be helpful and informative to you Ovi. Perhaps you could ask a professor an the university for a recommendation or find a syllabus online for similar courses at prestogious colleges.


Thanks for the good ideas.

I still learned a lot from the 6 week class, we covered prety much all the chapters that the Sheldon Ross book covers; it was just super condensed so (especially) towards the end I was just memorizing the bare minimum to get a good grade, not really mastering the material.
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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Snuden wrote:Is the "Martingale" system viable?

It's not in any of the books I've seen. Is it an important topic?
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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I'd just go with lecture slides. To learn probabilities/basic distributions you need some practise, basic algorithm and formulas. That's it quite much, theory is mostly waste of time and books are expensive as fuck.
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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Yea if you have a decent teacher there's really no reason to buy textbooks.....I think i've purchased 4 textbooks my last 3 semesters and never really used any of them.
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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I love my textbooks. I refer to them frequently as a refresher when working on various projects and to learn new concepts I need for work. I use textbooks as the primary source of referral and lecture notes secondly if further clarification is needed.

Textbooks aren't all that expensive if you've got a mind like a pirate.
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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somppukunkku wrote:I'd just go with lecture slides. To learn probabilities/basic distributions you need some practise, basic algorithm and formulas. That's it quite much, theory is mostly waste of time and books are expensive as fuck.

I study math so I am interested in the theory too. I usually buy books from Amazon 1 or 2 editions before the newest one so it's usually below $30.
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

Post by Vinyanyérë »

I actually did use this book in my undergraduate probability class. This was back when the 8th edition was the newest version and >$100, but I also found the book was quite easy to acquire through alternative means. I've no idea about the differences between the editions.

As far the as the book itself, it's not bad if you don't know any probability beforehand and want to get a taste of what mathematical probability is like. It doesn't cover much beyond the very basics of the subject, and I remember spending most of my time in that course computing double integrals. I'm not sure how much probability you want to/need to learn, but I'd consider this book a good place to start before going on to something more advanced. If you do go through this book, I'd suggest going through chapters 1-5 quickly (make sure you understand chapter 3, though). The important parts of the book are chapters 6-8, with 8 being especially important if you're looking to go further into probability. Chapter 9 looks like an assortment of miscellaneous topics in more advanced probability theory: they're interesting and worth reading over, but if you find them very interesting then you should look elsewhere to learn more. The same applies to chapter 10.

Martingale's are a subject that come up a lot in graduate probability theory courses. They're good fun but not worth worrying about right now.
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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Vinyanenya wrote:I actually did use this book in my undergraduate probability class. This was back when the 8th edition was the newest version and >$100, but I also found the book was quite easy to acquire through alternative means. I've no idea about the differences between the editions.

As far the as the book itself, it's not bad if you don't know any probability beforehand and want to get a taste of what mathematical probability is like. It doesn't cover much beyond the very basics of the subject, and I remember spending most of my time in that course computing double integrals. I'm not sure how much probability you want to/need to learn, but I'd consider this book a good place to start before going on to something more advanced. If you do go through this book, I'd suggest going through chapters 1-5 quickly (make sure you understand chapter 3, though). The important parts of the book are chapters 6-8, with 8 being especially important if you're looking to go further into probability. Chapter 9 looks like an assortment of miscellaneous topics in more advanced probability theory: they're interesting and worth reading over, but if you find them very interesting then you should look elsewhere to learn more. The same applies to chapter 10.

Martingale's are a subject that come up a lot in graduate probability theory courses. They're good fun but not worth worrying about right now.

What would be the natural path to take after this course? Is there one, or are there many possibilities?

Also, I know this must sound very naive, but what more is there to probability after this class? Just studying types of random variables, different functions of random variables, etc.?
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

Post by Vinyanyérë »

There's a few directions you could go, I suppose, depending on your interests. The most natural extension would probably be to learn about stochastic processes, but you could also do statistics, information theory, measure-theoretic probability, and other things.

Broadly speaking, there are a lot of different topics in probability that you can learn about that you won't see much in the Ross book. Stochastic processes are a huge part, and can be further subdivided into the study of random walks, Martingales, Markov processes (and Markov chains), Gaussian processes, and others. More theoretical subjects include the study of convergence, laws of large numbers, and central limit theorems. There's a number of fields that intersect heavily with probability theory, like the aforementioned statistics, information theory, communication theory, finance, game theory, and combinatorics. Depending on how far into probability you go, you might end up needing to learn about it more rigorously than Ross teaches it, which means learning about measure theory and its various prerequisites.
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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I think we ahould all pitch in to send @lejend to this course. 50% chance he will make history after!
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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Lol we made 10/10 at school. I just used the school book but not sure how deep we went into it.
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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Statistics was my least favorite college course.
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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deleted_user wrote:Statistics was my least favorite college course.

Hmm why?
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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English needs a real antonym for "favorite" other than "least favorite".
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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ovi12 wrote:
deleted_user wrote:Statistics was my least favorite college course.

Hmm why?

I guess I didn't really like it.
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

Post by musketsr »

I took a course a few years ago where we used Ross's book but I had a great professor, I don't remember referring to the book all that much. I do remember my professor would always talk about how virtually nothing changes between editions though. If you want to learn more about probability theory than Ross goes into, then unfortunately you kinda need to know measure theory which is a topic for intro graduate real analysis courses. Not sure if you're interested in going that far, but if you are there are lots of good textbooks for it. My favorite is probably Stein & Shakarchi Vol. III, and Folland's book is also very good. Once you have a decent knowledge of measure theory you can start getting more into probability theory. There are plenty of "standard" books for this too like Chung, Shiryaev, Durrett, Billingsley. I can't really speak to other books since I haven't used them but these ones are quite good imo.
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

Post by lemmings121 »

'ill steal the thread to a tangent question.

Whats the deal with those 'text books'? how do they differ from a standard technical book? or you just call any book a textbook? its just "written for students" ?
i'm confused.

(btw, your system of obligatory textbooks updated every year and sold by a 600usd each is fucked up)
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Re: 'A First Course in Probability' by Sheldon Ross

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musketsr wrote:I took a course a few years ago where we used Ross's book but I had a great professor, I don't remember referring to the book all that much. I do remember my professor would always talk about how virtually nothing changes between editions though. If you want to learn more about probability theory than Ross goes into, then unfortunately you kinda need to know measure theory which is a topic for intro graduate real analysis courses. Not sure if you're interested in going that far, but if you are there are lots of good textbooks for it. My favorite is probably Stein & Shakarchi Vol. III, and Folland's book is also very good. Once you have a decent knowledge of measure theory you can start getting more into probability theory. There are plenty of "standard" books for this too like Chung, Shiryaev, Durrett, Billingsley. I can't really speak to other books since I haven't used them but these ones are quite good imo.

Hmm yeah I'm not sure if I'm interested going into probability that deep yet. I am a math major now, but thinking about sqitching to statistics major for job purposes (I don't think I can go to graduate school yet, I will have to help my family I think)

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