Math/Stat 563 - Probability
Tom Kennedy - Fall 2021
Course home page:
www.math.arizona.edu/~tgk/563_f21/index.html
Meetings: MWF 11:00-11:50 in ENR2 S395. (This classroom is on the third floor of ENR2 and is detached from the south wing with all the offices. You enter it from outside.)
Course modality: This is a "live in-person" class, so you are expected to come to class. I plan to use the white board for lectures and do not plan to record the lectures. I will post a summary of what I cover each day so you can read the relevant section in the text if you miss a class.
Instructor:
Tom Kennedy (Professor, Mathematics)
email: tgk@math.arizona.edu
Office: ENR S318
Phone: I never check the voice-mail on my office phone. Please send me an email instead.
Office hours:
will be announced in class and
posted on the web.
D2L site:
The course has a D2L site, but it will only be used to post grades. All other course content, in particular homework assignements, exams, due dates, will be posted on these web pages.
Text(s):
The "official" text:
Richard Durrett, Probability: Theory and Examples
It is available on-line from the author's website.
It is also available through the UA library, but the the author's website
will let you download a pdf of the entire book and the UA site will not.
Some other books that may be useful can be found
here.
Prerequisites: Ideally, a course in measure theory and integration, e.g., Math 523 or Math 527. If you haven't taken such a course please talk to me. I will cover the measure theory and integration that we will need in the sense that I will state the results we need, but will not go through all the proofs.
Homework: Homework is the most important part of the course.
The only way to learn mathematics is by doing it.
I will give out homework sets approximately every week and a half.
Exams: There will be a take home midterm and a take home final.
No collaboration is allowed on the take home exams.
Homework collaboration:
Collaboration on homework (not the take home exams)
is encouraged, provided it is really collaboration and not simply
reproduction. To make this more precise, the rule is as follows.
You should have worked seriously on the problem before you discuss it
with others. You may then talk to each other about the problem, but anything
you write down while you are talking should be thrown away or erased
at the end of the conversation. In other words it is not fair to
take notes while you talk to someone else and then use them to
write up the solution. Feel free to ask me for hints on the homework.
Due dates:
Homework sets will have a due date.
You should turn in the problems you have done by the due date to
Gradescope.com. I will accept late problems up to one week after the due date, but they will get a 10% penalty. You should email late problems to me as a pdf. Note that gradescope will close on the due date so you cannot submit late problems there. I will not accept problems more than one week after the due date.
I will drop your lowest homework score. (I strongly encourage you to still do all the homework sets.)
Due dates for the take home exams are absolute; no late
papers will be accepted.
Exceptions to this policy will only be made in the case of serious illness.
Grades: The course grade will be determined using the weighting:
- Midterm 20%
- Final 20%
- Homeworks 60%
A course average of 90% or better will earn you an A in the course, 80% or better a B. The cutoffs may be more lenient than this.
Incompletes: I will follow the University and Departmental
policies on incompletes. The only scenario I can imagine in this course
that would lead to an incomplete is if a student is sick during the
week of the take home final.
Course objectives: See the list of
course topics.
Expected learning outcomes
At the end of the course students should be able to
- State the important definitions from the course.
- State the important theorems from the course.
- Apply the concepts above to study concrete examples.
- Write mathematically correct and understandable proofs using the above concepts.