Probably Not is organized around easy-to-follow examples that address the role of probability and statistics in real-life situations. Fun-to-solve problems including "the shared birthday" and "the prize behind door number one, two, or three" are found throughout the book, which allow readers to test and practice their new probability skills. Requiring little background knowledge of mathematics, readers will gain a greater understanding of the everyday activities that involve random processes and statistics.

Lawrence N. Dworsky, PhD, is a former corporate research lab director at Motorola, Inc., where he was also a member of the Science Advisory Board. He has also served as a consultant to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Littelfuse Corp., and HRL Laboratories, LLC. A Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Dr. Dworsky has held academic positions at Columbia University, Northern Illinois University, and Florida Atlantic University.

Preface	p. xi
An Introduction to Probability	p. 1
Predicting the Future	p. 1
Rule Making	p. 3
Random Events and Probability	p. 5
The Lottery {Very Improbable Events and Large Data Sets}	p. 10
Coin Flipping {Fair Games, Looking Backwards for Insight}	p. 13
The Coin Flip Strategy that Can't Lose	p. 19
The Prize Behind the Door {Looking Backwards for Insight, Again}	p. 20
The Checkerboard {Dealing with Only Part of the Data Set}	p. 22
Probability Distribution Functions and Some Basics	p. 27
The Probability Distribution Function	p. 27
Averages and Weighted Averages	p. 32
Expected Values	p. 35
The Basic Coin Flip Game	p. 37
The Standard Deviation	p. 40
The Cumulative Distribution Function	p. 48
The Confidence Interval	p. 49
Final Points	p. 50
Building a Bell	p. 54
Random Walks	p. 67
The One-Dimensional Random Walk	p. 67
What Probability Really Means	p. 75
Diffusion	p. 77
Life Insurance and Social Security	p. 82
Insurance as Gambling	p. 83
Life Tables	p. 85
Birth Rates and Population Stability	p. 90
Life Tables, Again	p. 91
Premiums	p. 94
Social Security-Sooner or Later?	p. 98
Binomial Probabilities	p. 104
The Binomial Probability Formula	p. 105
Permutations and Combinations	p. 107
Large Number Approximations	p. 109
The Poisson Distribution	p. 112
Disease Clusters	p. 114
Clusters	p. 114
Pseudorandom Numbers and Monte Carlo Simulations	p. 117
Pseudorandom Numbers	p. 118
The Middle Square PSNG	p. 119
The Linear Congruential PSNG	p. 121
A Normal Distribution Generator	p. 122
An Arbitrary Distribution Generator	p. 124
Monte Carlo Simulations	p. 126
A League of Our Own	p. 132
Some Gambling Games in Detail	p. 136
The Basic Coin Flip Game	p. 136
The Gantt Chart	p. 142
The "Ultimate Winning Strategy"	p. 144
The Game Show	p. 150
Parimutuel Betting	p. 154
Traffic Lights and Traffic	p. 158
Outsmarting a Traffic Light?	p. 159
Many Lights and Many Cars	p. 164
Simulating Traffic Flow	p. 164
Simulation Results	p. 167
Combined and Conditional Probabilities	p. 178
Functional Notation	p. 178
Conditional Probability	p. 183
Medical Test Results	p. 186
The Shared Birthday Problem	p. 189
Scheduling and Waiting	p. 192
Scheduling Appointments in the Doctor's Office	p. 193
Lunch with a Friend	p. 199
Waiting for a Bus	p. 204
Stock Market Portfolios	p. 208
Benford, Parrondo, and Simpson	p. 215
Benford's Law	p. 215
Parrondo's Paradox	p. 221
Simpson's Paradox	p. 228
Networks, Infectious Disease Propagation, and Chain Letters	p. 234
Degrees of Separation	p. 235
Propagation Along the Networks	p. 238
Some Other Uses of Networks	p. 242
Neighborhood Chains	p. 249
Bird Counting	p. 253
A Walk in the Woods	p. 253
A Model of Bird Flying Habits	p. 254
Spotting a Bird	p. 259
Putting It All Together	p. 261
Statistical Mechanics and Heat	p. 267
Statistical Mechanics	p. 268
Thermodynamics	p. 276
Introduction to Statistical Analysis	p. 280
Sampling	p. 281
Sample Distributions and Standard Deviations	p. 283
Estimating Population Average from a Sample	p. 285
The Student T Distribution	p. 288
Polling Statistics	p. 290
Did a Sample Come from a Given Population?	p. 291
Chaos and Quanta	p. 293
Chaos	p. 293
Probability in Quantum Mechanics	p. 301
Index	p. 307
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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