Rating: 
Summary: I can't believe something like this even exists!
Review: This book is just god awful. I think probablity theory is a very fascinating subject, however, I don't think this is a good book to learn it from.Where do I begin: -The biggest grip I have with this book is the problem set. The problems in this book are, literally, just plain hard. The author expects you to do problems,using the techniques they used in proving an actual theorem! I'm not talking about using the actual theorem, but the actual steps they used. I'm an undergrad in a graduate course, and most of the graduate students aren't even doing well on the homework assignments. I consider myself a pretty decent student. I was able to learn DSP using the Oppenheim book(with the aid of a teacher's solution manual of course). The problems in this book are harder than the problems in Oppenheim's DSP book(and I have a teachers solution manual for this prob. book). The bottomline is that 80-100 problems per chapter won't do anyone any good if they can't solve those problems. -The author's notation is extremely weird, confusing, and downright bad. -I just have the strangest feeling that the author is trying to make the students,whom are using the text, feel like they're stupid. -This book is nine years old. I think the author should rewrite the text from scratch. -My instructor is literally terrible, so I'm going through a lot of hell in this course. -And finally, the author, when explaining the theory, uses alot of tedious reasoning and formulas when doing certain theorems. For example, when he's explaining the concept of a bernoulli distribution, the author uses the indicator function to explain the concept. This is not even needed to explain this concept(I have checked this several books, and this was not done), and it's a bit tedious and pointless to include it in the theory. -My communication systems teacher told our class last semester, that learning from enigneering books is not a good way to learn material. This is all because the authors like to show off their intellectual skill and nothing more. They usually forget to include problems by the time of publishing, and have to delay the release of the book to include problems. And what do they include, diffcult problems, which are really not needed to learn introductory concepts.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much compromise to be a usable textbook
Review: This book may not be too friendly to those who are unfamiliar with the subject. This is because the subject is unfriendly. Before you complain about this book, take a look at the other books on the subject to realize that the author took a great effort to make it accessible. However, I personally do not like the degree of compromise made in this book. Too many uninsightful examples, and lacking detailed discussions. This cannot be a good reference book. For reference, I like Papoulis, for enjoy reading deep insights, I like Gardner, and I recommend Peebles for people who hated this book. However, Leon-Garcia is easier to read and faster moving than Papoulis and Gardner. It is not easy attempting to combine mathematical rigor (which this book still lacks) and engineering point of view from many application areas in one text book. Three stars because I like other books better, but this should be the lower bound of evaluation given to this book.
Rating:
Summary: No help for a difficult subject
Review: This book was a nightmare to understand. It seems to be written like the science texts of the 1950's. Generally, the text was vague in explanation of concepts. The examples were not helpful when attempting to do the problems at the end of the chapters. The student solutions manual did not thoroughly solve the problems, many steps were skipped, the answers in the back were more helpful. I would recommend staying far away from this book. My advice for the next edition would be start from scratch.
Rating:
Summary: No help for a difficult subject
Review: This book was a nightmare to understand. It seems to be written like the science texts of the 1950's. Generally, the text was vague in explanation of concepts. The examples were not helpful when attempting to do the problems at the end of the chapters. The student solutions manual did not thoroughly solve the problems, many steps were skipped, the answers in the back were more helpful. I would recommend staying far away from this book. My advice for the next edition would be start from scratch.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is very helpful as a reference.
Review: This text was used for the introductory probablities class at the University of Maryland (enee324). The book introduced material with adequate explanation, and the tables of random variable properties are useful as a reference. The treatment of Gaussian and Poisson random variables was poor, however. Also, the book had an erroneous equation for determining marginal probability density functions.
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