“Probability is nothing but common sense reduced to calculation.”
—Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827)
Readings
- Notes, Chapter 5: Probability (PDF)
- Huffmann, David A. “A Method for the Construction of Minimum-Redundancy Codes.” Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers 40 (September 1952): 1098–1101.
- Towser’s Wonderland Park greyhound handicaps, Boston Globe, February 27, 2005 (and results, Boston Globe, February 28, 2005)
Assignments
Resources
Technical
- Salomon, David. “Huffman Coding, section 2.8; Facsimile Compression using Huffman Coding, section 2.13.” In Data Compression. London, England: Springer, 2006. ISBN: 9781846286025.
- The Human Mortality Database from University of California, Berkeley.
- MIT current year student enrollment data
- Sebastiani, Paola. “A Tutorial on Probability Theory (PDF).” One of many good tutorials on the subject.
Historical
- David, F. N. Games, Gods, and Gambling. Dover, 1998. ISBN: 9780486400235.
- Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576), the first mathematician to calculate probabilities correctly.
- Thomas Bayes (1702–1761)
General Technical Books
There are many excellent texts on probability, many of which do not assume a familiarity with mathematics beyond introductory calculus. Most books on communications include a summary of the necessary background in probability.
- Drake, Alvin W. Fundamentals of Applied Probability Theory. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1967. ISBN: 9780070178151.
Prof. Drake taught 6.041 Probabilistic Systems Analysis for many years before he retired. He died Oct. 30, 2005. (Obituary) - Bertsekas, Dimitri P., and John N. Tsitsiklis. Introduction to Probability. Belmont, MA: Athena Scientific, 2002. ISBN: 9781886529403. Used in 6.041 today.
- Applebaum, David. Probability and Information. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780521727884.
Chapter 4, Probability, contains a good comparison of the different philosophies underlying probability (symmetry, subjective, frequency). - Haykin, Simon. Communication Systems. 4th ed. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2000. ISBN: 9780471178699.
Appendix 1, Probability Theory.
