MATH 5010 (Spring '13)
Time & Place: MWF 11:50AM - 12:40PM,
LCB 225
Lecturer:
Firas Rassoul-Agha
Phone: (801) 585-1647,
E-Mail:
firas@math.utah.edu
Office Hour: Monday 9:50-10:50AM or by appointment, at
LCB 209
TA: Shiu-Tang Li
TA Office Hour: Monday 3:10-4:00PM at
LCB loft (4th floor) and Friday 2-2:50PM at the math tutoring center
Prerequisites: Solid knowledge of Calculus I, II, and III.
Comfortable around double integrals.
Textbook: We will follow these
Lecture notes.
Homework is out of the
lecture notes. Most of the exercises there are in fact out of
the book
Basic Probability Theory, by Robert Ash.
An electronic pdf copy of Ash's book is available at
the author's website.
The book is also useful for additional examples and exercises (and is quite cheap!).
Strongly recommended: the textbook
Probability, by
J. Pitman, Springer, 1993
Two midterms count 25% each and are on
February 25 and April 12.
Same time and place as lecture.
Final counts 30% and is on
Thursday May 2, 10:30AM till 12:30PM,
same place as lecture.
Quizzes count 20% and are at the first 5 minutes of each Monday
lecture, starting January 14.
They consist of one question from the homework of the week before.
The lowest 2 quizzes will be dropped.
NO make-up tests or quizzes.
Homework will not be collected. However,
Exam questions are very similar to
assigned homework problems. Therefore, the BEST way to
keep up with the pace
of this course
and to prepare for exams is to
solve, at the very least,
the assigned
homework problems in a timely fashion.
Exams aside, to learn
the subject well you really need to solve as many
problems as you can.
Doing the math is the ONLY way to learn math.
Solutions to homework problems are available at the end of the
lecture notes. Some problems do not have a solution yet in the notes, but then their
solutions are at
Robert Ash's
website. However,
use the
solutions as a LAST resort.
Only after you have tried everything else and "suffered"
enough!
Do NOT consider that you overcame that particular weakness if you looked
at the
solution first! You will need to do other similar problems in this case.
You really need to
know how to reproduce the solution on the day of the exam!
Memorizing the solutions to
all homework problems is hopeless and not profitable.
Play the
three doors game!
Use
a simulation
of the three doors game, and see how many times you win the car,
if you switch v.s. if you don't.
Why should you switch?
A diagram illustrating why you should switch.
YouTube illustrations of the CLT:
Video1,
Video2
