Schaum's Outline of Theory and Problems of Probability,

by Seymour Lipschutz and Marc Lipson

Book Overview

Cover title: Theory and problems of probability, including 500 solved problems completely solved in detail.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0070379823
• ISBN13: 9780070379824
• Release Date: June 1968
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Length: 153 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 8.1" x 10.8"

Customer Reviews

I Like It

Like other books in their math series, it is an excellent workbook or refresher course, but cannot be used as a primary textbook. Good for: **supplementary exercises if you are currently taking a probability course **you just finished a course, but need more practice **you took a course, oh so many years ago, but need to brush up **you have a real calculation you have to do (e.g. you have polling data, and want know if marital status and voting in a presidential election are independent) It has these chapters: **set theory (venn diagrams) **techniques of counting (notation, diagrams, binomials) **introduction to probability (sample spaces, axioms) **conditional probability and independence **random variables (making calculations) **binomial and normal distributions **markov processes (markov chains and matrix calculations) **descriptive statistics (mean, variance, standard deviation) **chi-square distribution (calculating goodness of fit) This happy workbook has lots of worked out examples to show you how it is done, and lots of supplementary problems with answers so you can practice on your own. Since the chapters are only weakly dependent on each other, you can skip around and do not have to go through them in order.

Great Overview

I highly recommend this book. The power is in the worked problems. In class we are using Sheldon Ross's book but I think it was too hard to read. This book simplified a good amount of the material and boosted my confidence in the class. Again highly recommended.

Excellent

I found this book a simple, concise, and fairly easy introduction to probability theory. Most of the text doesn't require knowledge of calculus or linear algebra, but the text can serve to motivate studying of calculus and linear algebra as it does have some parts and problems which need calculus. The inclusion of a separate chapter, for review or to learn some basics, on set theory also makes this text as it helps to show how set theory gets applied. The classical birthday problem comes as an interesting way to show how probability theory can help us compute probabilities we can't directly count, and how probability can lead to ideas that expand our thinking. The last chapter on Markov chains helps motivate knowledge of linear algebra and also might help one analyze board games such as Chutes and Ladders. The authors graph-theoretic diagrams can also help to motivate knwoledge of, and the relevance of graph theory, and how it has relations to linear and vector algebra. The difficulty of the solved problems varies from "plug-and-chug" problems to proofs that require a decent dose of thinking, "untangling" of definitions, and drawing out of consequences. In my opinion, this makes the book neither too easy, nor too hard, and thus helps to facilitate enjoyment of the problems and insight. Since there exist many solved problems, one can fairly easily figure out where those errors occur. Even if you know lots of calculus I would still recommend this over Spiegel's Schaum for learning probability theory, as this book includes its chapter on Markov chains.

You'll excel!!!

I picked up this book upon a recommendation from my college bookstore. In class, we're using "A First Course in Probability" by Sheldon Ross. The book is too dry and made me fail the first test. Upon picking up this book though, I was able to do a lot of practice problems, was able to understand most concepts but more importantly, pass the class with an "A". I would recommend this book to anyone struggling in their probability class.

Excellent practical tool for learning; NOT sexist.

This book, like so many other Schaum's outlines, helped me years ago by giving me hundreds of problems and solutions.Now, I use this book as a supplement to college courses i teach in probability theory. It is the best book for simplifying problems that confuse many students. It helps make the material far more accessible.One person claimed the book was sexist; the book is ACCURATE. In every college i have any knowledge of, there are many more men than women in the math and phsyics courses. This is how the current world is. Bottom line: this book will help women and men learn probability theory.