Courses: Spring 2008
Math 380 Introduction to Probability
Combinatorial analysis. Permutations and combinations. Axioms of probability. Sample space and events. Equally likely outcomes. Conditional probability. Bayes' formula. Independent events and trials. Discrete random variables, probability mass functions. Expected value, variance. Bernoulli, binomial, Poisson, geometric, negative binomial random variables. Continuous random variables, density functions. Expected value and variance. Uniform, normal, exponential, Gamma random variables. The De Moivre-Laplace limit theorem. Joint probability mass functions and densities. Independent random variables and the distribution of their sums. Covariance. Conditional expectations and distributions (discrete case). Moment generating functions. Law of large numbers. Central limit theorem. Additional topics (time permitting): the Poisson process, finite state space Markov chains, entropy. Prereq: MATH 122 or MATH 126.
Math 492 Graduate Probability II
Conditional expectations. Discrete parameter martingales. Stopping times, optional stopping. Discrete parameter stationary processes and ergodic theory. Discrete time Markov processes. Introduction to continuous parameter stochastic processes. Kolmogorov's consistency theorem. Gaussian processes. Brownian motion theory (sample path properties, strong Markov property, Martingales associated to Brownian motion, functional central limit theorem). Prereq: MATH 491.