» First Course in Probability, A (7th Edition)

First Course in Probability, A (7th Edition) Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Good introductory book but it can be quite challenging ...
Comment: I have mixed feelings about this book. Being an introductory probability text, it does a good job of presenting the basic concept followed by lots of examples. But if you look at some of the examples closely, they are rather hard (especailly beginners seeing it for the first time). Fortunately for me, I have learned the concepts elsewhere before so I can see why it can be quite challenging for newbies.

Also, some students may not have exposure to induction, recursion, writing proofs, etc. - it will help if the instructor would guide them through the steps since many of the combinatorics problems would involve the use of them.

Another book at the same level as Ross's that I like is John Rice's ` Mathematical statistics and data analysis `. For the mathematically inclined student, I would also suggest mathematical probability book like William Feller's.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: valid reviews
Comment: If you look at the other reviews, some people think the book is really good, others don't care for it. I agree with both.
This book has good examples, good coverage of the material, lots of problems, and a nice section of self-test problems that helps study for tests. It also has issues with the wording of the problems. I don't find them clear and I spend a lot of time deciding on the intent of the problems. I have needed to look at the answers to tell how to interpret the questions.
I had a problem that Amazon had to fix - the binding on my first copy was terrible. The book fell apart in less than 2 weeks. I complained to Amazon that I would send it back except that I needed it for class. They sent me a new copy and a shipping label to return the pieces of the first, and they did it overnight. I am very pleased, and the new copy is holding up according to expectations for an expensive text book. Since no one else has reported this problem, I hope it was a simple quality failure at assembly. Amazon handled it very well. The book was significantly less expensive with Amazon than at school, and since I have Amazon Prime, the shipping was not an issue.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good book, appropriate for senior undergraduates or early graduate students.
Comment: The book covers pretty much all the main topics in probability, at the end of every chapter there are 3 kinds of exercises: problems, theorical exercises and self test problems, at the end of the book it contains the answers to the problems and self-test exercises(just answers no procedures), it might be a good tool for students to check with the answer when finishing the exercises.

The book requires a good foundation and background in calculus, so it may be an appropriate textbook for senior undergraduates or early graduate students.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: perfect
Comment: I needed it the next day and got it the next day. Can't ask for more. Great reliability and service.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Those who cannot do, teach... or write this book.
Comment: I have only been using this book for about a month now, but it is by far one of the worst books I have used in college. Combined with the terrible teacher Michigan State University provides (literally could not do one of the problems she assigned us) it makes basic combinations and probability a GPA slaughterhouse. Luckily I found a solution to the problem the professor couldn't solve on the internet and it made it actually clear (thank God for Wikipedia). Unfortunately I doubt there will be more easy to find info on the more complicated stuff further into the book. Instead of being able to organize and classify the subject matter and methods of approach to a problem, it just keeps throwing examples at you. I guess, if you use this book as your soul example, statistics is a poorly understood voodoo and those who teach it can only communicate it to you through "you'll figure it out." Instead of learning a theory of statistics, I basically am just gonna have to memorize things.

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