Week 5 – Probability
Lecture (Monday, April 25th) 👨🏫
Readings 📖
- Fermat and Pascal on Probability: skim, but read
- Wikipedia, Lady tasting tea
- Stahl, The Evolution of the Normal Distribution, Pages 105-106
- YouTube: Normal distribution’s probability density function derived in 5min
- Rosenfeld, History of Probability (Part 3) - Jacob Bernoulli (1654-1705) – Law of Large Numbers
Optional:
- Sheynin, Theory of Probability. A Historical Essay: very detailed, but contains lots of interesting tidbits
- YouTube: Can You Solve The Problem That Inspired Probability Theory?: another explanation of the Problem of Points
- Cherowitzo, The Problem of Points slides
- YouTube: This DERIVATION of the BELL CURVE will SHOCK you!!!: another, much longer derivation of the normal distribution
- YouTube: Integral of exp(-x^2): watch if you want to see a proof that \(\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} e^{-x^2} dx = \sqrt{\pi}\), using techniques from Math 20C
Homework 5 (due Sunday, May 1st at 11:59PM) 📝
Click here to access the homework on DataHub.
Click here to access the solutions.