Chapter 1: Review of Probability

Review material

The book by Grinstead and Snell is available online and it should be consulted for reference on probability review.

Sigma field (or sigma algebra)

This is a rather important costruct. Probability is a function defined on the members of the sigma field. Here is a link from Wikipedia explaining sigma fields with examples.

Here is a Maple file which finds the power set of a sample space.

 

Generating functions

 

Here is a simple example of Maple inverting a p.g.f.

Sum of two r.v.'s

This Maple file finds the p.d.f. of the sum of two r.v.'s in two different ways.

Laplace transforms

 

In this worksheet, Maple inverts a Laplace transform.

 

Joint density

 

Here we have a pair of r.v.'s X and Y whose joint density is given. The problem is to find the expected value of X given Y. The Maple solution is given here. (I don't like this example. I will give you another one on Sep. 23, 2013.)

 

Here is a better, and more practical, explanation of the conditional densities using an example of throwing darts.

The thief of Baghdad problem

We will discuss an example where the thief (good guy) is imprisoned in a dungeon with three doors which he can't see. One of the doors leads to freedom. If he chooses a wrong door he will return to the dungeon. What is the expected time until freedom? This problem needs conditioning arguments.

A 1924 movie starring Douglas Fairbanks has the same title as our problem.