Math492 – Probability II
Spring 2019

Instructor: Elizabeth Meckes

Office: Yost 208

Phone: 368-5015

Email: ese3 [at] cwru.edu

Office Hours: T 1-2:15, F 10-11:15

Textbook:

Probability and Measure, 3e by Patrick Billingsley, supplemented with other resources

Course web page:

http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/math/esmeckes/math492/.

All course information is posted here.

Topics: We will go through most of chapters 6 – 7 of Billingsley. Other topics/resources will be determined based on time and the interests of the audience.

Attendance/Reading:

You are expected to attend the lectures, take notes (some material may be covered in class that is not in the text), and read the text book, (it is certain that not all material will be discussed in class). This book is very thorough and well-written, and will be a valuable resource for the course.

Homework Problems:

As you presumably know by now, mathematics is not a spectator sport. The lectures and the book are there to get you started, but real understanding comes through working with the ideas, which is what homework is for.

I will post homework after most lectures. You should try to do it right away, and come talk to me if you get stuck. This semester, I will not be collecting solutions, but I encourage you to still type up solutions for yourself. I will give you my solutions to the posted problems about a week later.

On the value of working through problems yourself, an anonymous commenter has this to say (slightly edited from its original form):

You learn by creating a solution to a problem. You learn much less by simply reading someone else's solution.

The professor hasn't asked you to solve a problem because he/she needs the solution. The question has been asked because solving the question will advance your education; looking up a solution will be much less effective at that.

Education is about changing how your brain works. In mathematics, especially, you need to work through things yourself in order to cause the brain to reorganize itself to make advancement possible. Asking the instructor for help is better in this regard than asking someone else, say on math.SE. The reason is that the instructor can give you a hint that will help you advance, rather than a solution that won't. It may even be useful for your instructor to know that you are struggling with some ideas. You may get advice that gets you past the block. Math.SE is very unlikely to do that. The answers you likely get there will be too helpful. Becoming a mathematician is about changes in your brain, not about proofs printed on paper.

Grading: There will be four in-class quizzes throughout the semester. Each is worth 25% of the course grade.

Assignments: Problems from Billingsley are numbered as n.m, with n being the section number and m the problem number.

Section	Problems	Date posted
33	class problem, 33.2, 33.7	1/14/19
33	class problem	1/18/19
34	34.9, 34.10	1/23/19
35	35.6, 35.9	1/29/19
35	class problem, 35.17	2/8/19
BM	problems	2/13/19
BM	problem	2/15/19
BM	problems	2/19/19
BM	problems	2/28/19
BM	problems	3/6/19
RMTCCG	Exercises 1.2, 1.5	3/8/19
RMTCCG	Exercises 2.2, 2.3; go through the details of Lemma 2.1	3/18/19
RMTCCG	problems	3/22/19
RMTCCG	problem	3/26/19
RMTCCG	problem	3/27/19
RMTCCG	Read section 1.3	4/8/19
RMTCCG	3.10, problem	4/16/19
RMTCCG	problem	4/19/19
RMTCCG	problem	4/24/19