The Probability Tutoring Book: An Intuitive Course for Engineers and Scientists (And Everyone Else!)

A friend of mine had Carol Ash as his professor for probability theory back in the late '80s and he remembers her quite fondly. Upon looking through the book he told me this a write-up of her lecture notes. Taking probability (a notoriously difficult subject) around the same time I didn't get so lucky. The professor was decent but the book was not and I struggled with probability topics (though curiously enough, I still have it and use it as a reference--time cures all wounds :). Much later I taught probability and statistics and drew a lot of examples, problems, and explanations for class from this book. It's quite good and very well written, worth your time if you need some extra help understanding your textbook (many of these are shockingly bad) or for self-study. One big selling point is that the problems are quite thoroughly worked out with intermediate steps explained.

Like a good tutor, the "Probability Tutoring Book" explained and clarified points that I'd learned from my instructor and textbook in introductory Probability. Ash's explanations are often very helpful, and her book is loaded with good practice problems. The section on Combinatorics is probably a little too difficult, but I finally managed to grasp the concepts by consulting and doing problems from an old, very helpful book from the library: "Probability: A First Course" by Mosteller, Rourke, and Thomas. Overall, I give Ash's "Probability Tutoring Book" a very high rating as an aid to mastering the fundamentals of probability theory.

This is a truly terrific book covering the basics of probability theory, but it goes far beyond a mere topical treatment of the subject. I was preparing to take a graduate course required for getting a PhD in statistics, and this book was an excellent way to get a leg up in the course. It is clear to me that a great deal of effort and thought was put into making this an excellent text. Thank you Dr. Ash!