Schaum's Outline of Probability, 2nd Edition

Rating:
Summary: a weaker schaum's outline
Review: Although these books are usually used as a supplement to a textbook you are using for class, this book could work on its own. As long as you have some algebra under your belt, you should have no problem following this.

If you are looking to see what areas this covers, the chapters talk about set theory, techniques of counting, a probability introduction, conditional probability and independence, random variables, distributions (binomial, normal, and Poisson), and Markov chains. There are plenty of definitions, explanations, charts, and tables to help you remember and understand all the appropriate information. This is a very handy reference.

As with other books in the series, this book walks you through a few problems and then gives you some to solve. I like this book in that it gives you the answers so that you can check your understanding. Although it does walk you through the ones you did, you do have the final answer.

I would recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Good by itself
Review: Although these books are usually used as a supplement to a textbook you are using for class, this book could work on its own. As long as you have some algebra under your belt, you should have no problem following this.

If you are looking to see what areas this covers, the chapters talk about set theory, techniques of counting, a probability introduction, conditional probability and independence, random variables, distributions (binomial, normal, and Poisson), and Markov chains. There are plenty of definitions, explanations, charts, and tables to help you remember and understand all the appropriate information. This is a very handy reference.

As with other books in the series, this book walks you through a few problems and then gives you some to solve. I like this book in that it gives you the answers so that you can check your understanding. Although it does walk you through the ones you did, you do have the final answer.

I would recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Better than most porbability texts
Review: I believe this book is excellent, but I would supplement it with a book on probability (perhaps A First Course in Probability by Ross). It's introductory, easily-read, and offers theoretical foundations for most everything in the problems.

Rating:
Summary: You'll excel!!!
Review: I picked up this book upon a recommendation from my college bookstore. In class, we're using "A First Course in Probability" by Sheldon Ross. The book is too dry and made me fail the first test. Upon picking up this book though, I was able to do a lot of practice problems, was able to understand most concepts but more importantly, pass the class with an "A". I would recommend this book to anyone struggling in their probability class.

Rating:
Summary: a weaker schaum's outline
Review: Pitched to a weakish high school math background. Scant treatment of continuous random variables is one of several reasons this fails to achieve the comprehensiveness of other schaum's outlines. There may be courses where this is a good study aid (e.g. probability for poets), but it's a poor reference to basic probability for someone with a stronger math background.

Like other schaum's it is riddled with typographical errors and there is no errata. Eg. Appearing twice:

Correlation(X,Y) = Cov(X,Y) / E(X)E(Y).

Even at their worst, I still find the schaum's guides (this one included) better than a typical textbook with the same scope. This one, however, the problem is scope.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This book covers the elementary concepts of probablity commensurate with a first semester calculus-based course in probability. It makes an excellent reference manual for mathematicians and the quantitatively inclined. It could easily be used as a primary source on the topic becuase it is very reader friendly. Its coverage of discrete functions is especially good.