The Pleasures of Probability (Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics)

This is a very readable, brief intro to probability and how it isused to evaluate chance outcomes in many situations.It is written at the level of undergraduate mathematics.The author has a very readable style and does a good jobof explaining complex concepts. Some of the topicscovered include the Monty Hall problem, winning thelottery (or trying to), games (e.g. roulette, dice),the monkey-typewriter problem, conditional probability,Poisson processes, central limit theorem, Baye's formula,random numbers and walks, Monte Carlo methods, and more.There are only a few diagrams in the book and I thought morewould have improved the book. There are exercises at the endof each chapter (with answers given in the back) and a short bibliography (35 references).The book arrived on time and was in very goodcondition. However the book was packaged only in thinshrink wrap with no other protection. Fortunately it wasnot damaged during shipment.

As a warning I have only used the kindle version, as this was my first experiment in using the kindle for a reference book.While the content and examples presented are great, the formatting on the kindle suffers from several problems, mainly when presenting formulas. They mistakenly have C instead of subset operators, leave off multiplication dots between numbers, etc. When there aren't mistakes in the format they suffer from some fairly obviously low res images for the formulas.I cannot compare this with the print version but I have not ever found a print book with all of these problems.I would be curious to know if this problem exists in many of the books or its specific to only this one. In any case be warned.So on content I give this 4 stars. On ebook presentation I would probably give it 2.

The author invites the reader visit the world of probability and statistics throughout interesting examples and stories. The book has many interesting motivating insights.

Chapters are short, explanations of concepts are fairly thorough, and helpful explanations of answers to chapter questions are provided. However, I have a very limited background in mathematics and I found the material to be very difficult, even after carefully reading the text and attempting to solve the chapter problems.

This is a wonderful book for both the serious and amateur mathematician. For the serious student and practitioner it will provide an excellent background. For the amateur who enjoy dabbling and reading about math, this is a wonderful book - just read the opening section which explains clearly and an illustrated fashion the Monty Hall problem.

This is great book for those interested in probability and mathematics as a whole. The writing and the structure are concise. There are great practice problems at the end of each chapter accompanied with the answerers in the back of the book. My only critique is, in an attempt to make the concepts clear, the author sometimes over explains, thus doing the opposite of what he intended.

Professor Isaac has written a book for those interested in learning about probability. It is at a high school algebra level although knowledge of calculus could be helpful at times. He starts with the now famous Monte Hall problem and provides the most lucid explanation I have seen to date. This is a great way to introduce important probability notions such as sample space and probability models for the sample outcomes. Deals mainly with discrete probability which is easiest to understand and yet rich with applications in gambling and other areas.Important theory is presented but without the detailed mathematical proofs. Covers the gambler's ruin, geometric probability, Monte Carlo methods and some statistical decision theory. He also presents both the frequentist (throughout the text)and the Bayesian paradigms (Chapter 4) for statistical inference. Examples of the application of probability to statistical inference is nicely treated in Chapter 15. The deeper material on Markov chains and Brownian motion are relegated to the last two chapters (16 and 17). The exposition is excellent throughout and many good references are provided for readers who want to learn more or delve deeper into the theory.

This introduction to probability and statistics teaches you about important concepts, theorems and applications without going into proving most of them. It's easily accessible to amateur mathematicians with a bit of persistance, and it illuminates many of its concepts using famous problems. I'm going to take a statistics course next year, and I found this to be a delightful introduction to the topic.

Libro claro y ameno sobre los conceptos basicos relacionados con la probabilidad. Es un muy buen libro para refrescar conocimientos adquiridos en el pasado.

Not good!