Lecture Description
We introduce conditional probability, independence of events, and Bayes' rule.
Course Index
- Probability and Counting
- Story Proofs, Axioms of Probability
- Birthday Problem, Properties of Probability
- Conditional Probability
- Conditioning Continued, Law of Total Probability
- Monty Hall, Simpson's Paradox
- Gambler's Ruin and Random Variables
- Random Variables and Their Distributions
- Expectation, Indicator Random Variables, Linearity
- Expectation (Continued)
- The Poisson distribution
- Discrete vs. Continuous, the Uniform
- Normal Distribution
- Location, Scale, and LOTUS
- Midterm Review
- Exponential Distribution
- Moment Generating Functions
- MGFs (Continued)
- Joint, Conditional, and Marginal Distributions
- Multinomial and Cauchy
- Covariance and Correlation
- Transformations and Convolutions
- Beta distribution
- Gamma distribution and Poisson process
- Order Statistics and Conditional Expectation
- Conditional Expectation (Continued)
- Conditional Expectation given an R.V.
- Inequalities
- Law of Large Numbers and Central Limit Theorem
- Chi-Square, Student-t, Multivariate Normal
- Markov Chains
- Markov Chains (Continued)
- Markov Chains Continued Further
- Course Overview: A Look Ahead
- The Soul of Statistics
Course Description
This course is an introduction to probability as a language and set of tools for understanding statistics, science, risk, and randomness. The ideas and methods are useful in statistics, science, engineering, economics, finance, and everyday life. Topics include the following. Basics: sample spaces and events, conditioning, Bayes' Theorem. Random variables and their distributions: distributions, moment generating functions, expectation, variance, covariance, correlation, conditional expectation. Univariate distributions: Normal, t, Binomial, Negative Binomial, Poisson, Beta, Gamma. Multivariate distributions: joint, conditional, and marginal distributions, independence, transformations, Multinomial, Multivariate Normal. Limit theorems: law of large numbers, central limit theorem. Markov chains: transition probabilities, stationary distributions, reversibility, convergence. Prerequisite: single variable calculus, familiarity with matrices.
Statistics 110 (Probability) has been taught at Harvard University by Joe Blitzstein (Professor of the Practice in Statistics, Harvard University) each year since 2006. The on-campus Stat 110 course has grown from 80 students to over 300 students per year in that time. Lecture videos, review materials, and over 250 practice problems with detailed solutions are provided.