Probability III-IV -- MATH3211/4131

This page will accumulate information about the course Probability III-IV (Epiphany 2017)

Links Sources Problems Exam Contact

Lectures: Monday @ 5 & Fridayday @ 11, both in CM107

Problems classes: Thursday @ 9 (teaching weeks 12, 14, 16, 18) in CM221


William Feller, one of the greatest probabilists of the XXth century, once observed that many "commonly accepted notions about chance fluctuations are without foundation and <...> the implications of the law of large numbers are widely misconstrued". The purpose of this course is to attempt to bring your "everyday intuition" and "common sense" in agreement with the laws of probability. We shall use as elementary methods as possible, while discussing a variety of topics ranging from random walks and renewal theory to records, extreme values and non-Gaussian limit results.

Prerequisites: Probability I and Probability II, willingness to experiment and analyse.

Further information about the module, including the list of suggested books can be found here.


LINKS


SOURCES

Short lecture summaries and some R scripts will be available here for download. If you want to run R scripts used in the lectures, follow the instructions in the corresponding source files. R is installed on (most) University computers. If you want to install R on your own computer, follow the instructions here.


PROBLEMS

Homework will be set from problems/exercises in the lecture notes [pdf]; the problems sheets will be handed out in lectures with at least four assignments per term to be handed in and marked. The problems can also be printed out from this page. (Short) solutions will be provided from DUO after marked homework is returned.

Problems for Homework

Date set Due Date Problems Hints / Solutions
27/01  03/02  4.5, 4.6, 4.8, 4.12 (pdf HW5 sol'n on DUO 
10/02  17/02  5.2, 5.5, 5.7, 5.11, 5.18 (pdf HW6 sol'n on DUO 
27/02  06/03  6.3, 6.5, 6.8, 6.12 (pdf HW7 sol'n on DUO 
10/03  17/03  7.5, 7.6 (pdf HW8 sol'n on DUO 


EXAM

The exam-related info shall be posted here in due time. Meanwhile, a sensible approach is to revise the homework problems and attempt the exercises in the notes.

4H reading material: If you follow Probability IV version of the course, you should have received an email with the corresponding instructions. Get in touch immediately if you cannot locate the message!


CONTACT

If you have questions or comments etc please come and see me after the lecture (or in CM309); you can also send me your remarks via email or the following anonymous form.

Last revision: 17/03/17