Instructor: Dr. Mai Zhou

Office: P. O. T. 849, Mailbox: P. O. T. 843, Phone: 257-6912, E-mail: mai@ms.uky.edu, Web page (this page): http://www.ms.uky.edu/~mai/sta320.html Office Hours: Mon. 3 - 4PM. Thur. 2 - 3:30 PM. .

Class: Tues. and Thur. 9:30 AM -- 10:45 AM at CB 243

Textbook: (required) We are going to use a book that is GNU copyrighted. This means you can download the pdf file of the book and print yourself a copy. This is a book of 500 pages. It may be a good idea for someone to print it once and then Xerox it for the entire class, and bound them at Kinko's (may be Kinko will do the Xeroxing too). Follow the link on this page for download, it also contains many other useful materials related to this book.
Probability Book
The textbook is available at Johnny Print (Friday afternoon 8/27).

We are going to cover at least the first six chapters, and then dependenting on how many time left, we cover some topics selected from chapters seven, eight, nine and sections 10.1; 10.3.
I expect you to read the book first, before we cover the topics in class.
Occasionally I may add my own notes and homework problems as we proceed.
Homework and notes: Homework1 , Homework2 , Homework3 , Homework4 , Homework5 , Homework6 , Homework7 , Homework8 , Homework9 , Homework10 , Homework11 , Homework12 ,

Another online book: (not required)
Probability and Statistics follow links there for PDF files of more then 500 pages of Lecture Notes! The first half of the book is a review of probability useful in statistics. This book is also very good but is at a somewhat higher level than this course.

Evaluations:
Homeworks 35 %
Midterm 1 Oct. 7, 2004 CB 243. 15%
Midterm 2 Nov. 23, 2004 CB 243. 20%
Final Exam Dec. 14, 2004; 10:30 AM CB 243. 30 %

Computer/Software: Although we could go through a probability course without using computer/software, it would be a pity not to use them. Probability has two faces, it is analytical, logical, deductory mathematics, it is also very much an intuitive, experimental science. Computer would help us understand the second face. To keep the GNU flavor of the book, I suggest we use the GNU math/stat software R or Octave.
On the other hand, this is not a computer science class and I will not spend a lot of time teaching how to use computers/softwares. If you used computer before and liked it, then you should have no problem with R/Octave. Otherwise Java applets may be a lower bound for computing.