Excursions through probability theory. (Q819194)

\noindent The book is not intended to be a textbook for a course but might well be used in parallel with a course in probability at the level of the first few semesters of university study, or for independent reading by a wider public, including teachers and pupils in the gymnasium. For the most part the eight chapters may be read independently of one another, and most chapters begin at a relatively easy level and become progressively more difficult. The first chapter, on the concepts of chance and probability in general, does underlie the rest of the book. Chapter 2, Three paradoxes, deals with three well-known problems with answers that are at first somewhat surprising (e.g., the Monty Hall problem involving an auto and goats). Chapter 3, Game theory, introduces zero-sum games and some classical bimatrix games. Chapter 4 discusses the weak and strong laws of large numbers. Chapter 5, Percolation, deals with random graphs, percolation in two or more dimensions, percolation in trees, and the number of infinite connected components. Chapter 6, The world is small, discusses social networks, Milgram's acquaintance chains, Erdős numbers and the small-world graphs of Watts and Strogatz. The last two chapters are on random walks, Markov chains and the probability of a random path returning to its starting point. There are three appendices: A is on sums and series, B covers some fundamentals of probability theory, and C contains 17 exercises or projects.