I have mixed feelings about this book. Being an introductory probability text, it does a good job of presenting the basic concept followed by lots of examples. But if you look at some of the examples closely, they are rather hard (especailly beginners seeing it for the first time). Fortunately for me, I have learned the concepts elsewhere before so I can see why it can be quite challenging for newbies.

Also, some students may not have exposure to induction, recursion, writing proofs, etc. - it will help if the instructor would guide them through the steps since many of the combinatorics problems would involve the use of them.

Another book at the same level as Ross's that I like is John Rice's ` Mathematical statistics and data analysis `. For the mathematically inclined student, I would also suggest mathematical probability book like William Feller's.

If you look at the other reviews, some people think the book is really good, others don't care for it. I agree with both.
This book has good examples, good coverage of the material, lots of problems, and a nice section of self-test problems that helps study for tests. It also has issues with the wording of the problems. I don't find them clear and I spend a lot of time deciding on the intent of the problems. I have needed to look at the answers to tell how to interpret the questions.
I had a problem that Amazon had to fix - the binding on my first copy was terrible. The book fell apart in less than 2 weeks. I complained to Amazon that I would send it back except that I needed it for class. They sent me a new copy and a shipping label to return the pieces of the first, and they did it overnight. I am very pleased, and the new copy is holding up according to expectations for an expensive text book. Since no one else has reported this problem, I hope it was a simple quality failure at assembly. Amazon handled it very well. The book was significantly less expensive with Amazon than at school, and since I have Amazon Prime, the shipping was not an issue.

The book covers pretty much all the main topics in probability, at the end of every chapter there are 3 kinds of exercises: problems, theorical exercises and self test problems, at the end of the book it contains the answers to the problems and self-test exercises(just answers no procedures), it might be a good tool for students to check with the answer when finishing the exercises.

The book requires a good foundation and background in calculus, so it may be an appropriate textbook for senior undergraduates or early graduate students.

I needed it the next day and got it the next day. Can't ask for more. Great reliability and service.

I have only been using this book for about a month now, but it is by far one of the worst books I have used in college. Combined with the terrible teacher Michigan State University provides (literally could not do one of the problems she assigned us) it makes basic combinations and probability a GPA slaughterhouse. Luckily I found a solution to the problem the professor couldn't solve on the internet and it made it actually clear (thank God for Wikipedia). Unfortunately I doubt there will be more easy to find info on the more complicated stuff further into the book. Instead of being able to organize and classify the subject matter and methods of approach to a problem, it just keeps throwing examples at you. I guess, if you use this book as your soul example, statistics is a poorly understood voodoo and those who teach it can only communicate it to you through "you'll figure it out." Instead of learning a theory of statistics, I basically am just gonna have to memorize things.

When compared to the other texts being used by other professors teaching the same course, I found this book to be very complete, and easily understandable. It is an appropriate source for learning basic probability theory and calculation. Included are many examples to solidify concepts. For the more advanced student, there are theories and proofs, and for the beginning student there are sufficient basic calculation problems to solidify the concepts.
I personally liked that this text was geared towards basic mathematical theory. Other texts might include more complex probability models the business student could use to plug and play without considering the math behind the models. But if you are interested in the math. This is a great text.

I don't understand why so many reviewers are claiming you need a "strong" math background. You do need a math background, this *is* mathematics, right? You need to know your calculus, of course. Why would you hope or think otherwise?

But Ross won't BS you into pushing sigma-algebras at your face, cluttering up the reading with "rigour", when you can't make sense of rigour, since you haven't taken measure theory (we all haven't, at this point, and most will not). So Ross is not making any false claims. Let's keep it real.

The book is loaded with examples, as many reviewers mentioned. The examples are relevant, with many a classic problem present. Some examples may be hard, but yet again Ross is not fooling you with problems so stupid they're not even worth solving. Besides, there are loads of exercises, not all easy, not all hard. You only learn through examples and through exercises. I've seen problems on my exams that are like the ones Ross exemplified. Expect the same, even if you are following a "nice" easy-reading book with *no* examples. I hope you get my drift.

Maybe Ross could be made better with more verbose explanations? Possibly. Yet, I found out this is one book that I can't do without. I don't think the same about a bunch of other introductory texts I have. I could toss away a dozen, but I would keep Ross. If you feel this is too hard, you can probably benefit from another text to use side-by-side, like Dekking's.

Anyways, this is an excellent book. Work it! Don't believe all the whining (maybe their teachers chose the wrong book for the wrong crowd). You do *not* need to be a math genius to read this book. Math, physics, engineering, finance undergrads will feel at home with Ross.

Ross's 7th Edition A First Course In Probability is a staple text for Statisitcs classes. The explanations are quite complex. The problems in the back of every chapter are so much harder than the examples provided in the text. If you're oblivious to some statisitcal concepts and are seeking to advance into an intermediate understanding of statisitcs, do not buy this book! If it is a required text for a class, make sure you suppliment it with a calculus text book and a lower level stat book that goes over the basics. This book doesn't aim to teach but rather expand on the concepts you should already know! Good Luck!

This book is really great for the essentials of probability. I see that some people found it hard to understand and my feeling is that these are people who are not familiar with the math that is prerequisite to probability. If you're familiar with basic calculus and sets, this book is a good reference or intro to the topic of probability.

I used this book 18 years ago in an "introductory" probability course for advanced undergraduate/beginning graduate applied mathematics students. The course didn't assume any previous knowledge of probability, but it did require a background in multivariate calculus, and for this type of course this text is appropriate. Despite the plethora of examples that it provides, this would be a terrible introductory text for freshmen or sophmores, especially those who (intend to) major in the social sciences, as it really is focused on developing the theory behind the subject.

As I recall, the first 2 chapters treated combinatorics, in a frustratingly intuitive fashion, in the sense that it seemed the only way to do the problems was to try to copy examples given in the text. There were also some confusing paradox-type problems, where it seems as if more than one answer is possible depending on one's perspective, and for these the text did not provide much guidance.

Once beyond these early chapters, the book became much more analytic, essentially becoming an exercise in multiple integration, which I, as a strong mathematics student, found to be much easier, but many other readers (such as other reviewers here) would probably feel the opposite. Still, I recall spending a disporportionate amount of time that semester on this course, essentially because of the difficulty of the text, and in particular, I recall many tedious problems that revolved around summing infinite series, which can be daunting until one develops the necessary bag of tricks. Still, I think the book did do a good job of explaining the theory of probability, even if this was not much use in solving exercises.

While I have rated this as 4 stars, I can understand how those who don't share my enthusiasm for challenging texts would rate it lower.

I used this book 18 years ago in an "introductory" probability course for advanced undergraduate/beginning graduate applied mathematics students. The course didn't assume any previous knowledge of probability, but it did require a background in multivariate calculus, and for this type of course this text is appropriate. Despite the plethora of examples that it provides, this would be a terrible introductory text for freshmen or sophmores, especially those who (intend to) major in the social sciences, as it really is focused on developing the theory behind the subject.

As I recall, the first few chapters treated combinatorics, in a frustratingly intuitive fashion, in the sense that it seemed the only way to do the problems was to try to copy examples given in the text. There were also some confusing "Prisoner's Dilemma"-type problems, where it seems as if more than one answer is possible depending on one's perspective, and for these the text did not provide much guidance.

Once beyond these early chapters, the book became much more analytic, essentially becoming an exercise in multiple integration, which I, as a strong mathematics student, found to be much easier, but many other readers (such as other reviewers here) would probably feel the opposite. Still, I recall spending a disporportionate amount of time that semester on this course, essentially because of the difficulty of the text, and in particular, I recall many tedious problems that revolved around summing infinite series, which can be daunting until one develops the necessary bag of tricks. Still, I think the book did do a good job of explaining the theory of probability, even if this was not much use in solving exercises.

While I have rated this as 4 stars, I can understand how those who don't share my enthusiasm for challenging texts would rate it lower.

Well first off I would like to tell anyone who doesn't have a solid working knowledge of calculus (including multivariate) to avoid this book as it requires multiple integrals and infinite series and sequences. Now onto the good and the bad:

THE GOOD:

This text explains concepts very well and is FULL of examples. I mean literally 3/4 of the book, maybe more, is examples. Every chapter also has a section of problems that have partial solutions, which can come in very handy. This is pretty much all that is good about this text, but keep in mind that explaination is the most important part of any textbook.

THE BAD:

The proofs skip plenty of steps. And I mean plenty, so much that a proof in the book would take 5 lines but when my professor proved it in class it would take him nearly 15. Also while there are tonnes of examples, too many are theoretical and very hard. I took this course first term of my second year, and it's too much to ask from second year students to solve these kinds of questions. Also there are lots of homework questions, however no solution manual, only the very few solved in the back of the book (which is better than nothing I suppose). The book also costs a hefty amount of change and is suprisingly small, not even an inch thick. However the worst thing about this book is how the author leaves important things in with the text often. Often key terms and formulae lie within the text, and are made to not look important at all (so go to class to see what's stressed!). However most these things are small, and overall the text is a good intro to probability theory.

This book first of all doesn't seem too introductory to me. As other reviewers have said, this is suitable for a first-time graduate student, and elementary calculus is just not enough. While there are a good bit of examples some of them I find, make no sense and have little to back up how he got the answers. They of course make no sense to me because there was no good explanation, just utterly confusing notations, and large numbers. While this book does cover much important topics in probability theory, what is the point of it all if nobody understands it. This book in short assumes too much, and should take the time to do more explanation rather than calculation.

I would say that this book is poorly written, except that saying that it was written at all gives it too much credit. Almost no writing was done for this book; it's more accurate to say that the book was "compiled" out of a stack of example problems.

The author seems to have taken the idea that, "Students don't ever really read textbooks" to heart and crafted a book that simply cannot be read. The best you can do is browse through it, looking for examples that match what you're trying to do and studying them. His sample solutions are detailed, but they make little attempt to teach the intuition behind why certain steps are chosen. Nor can that intuition be learned from the main text of the chapter, as there is wretchedly little of it.

A horrible book; bad even by the low standards that math textbooks are generally held to.

I would say that this book is poorly written, except that saying that it was written at all gives it too much credit. Almost no writing was done for this book; it's more accurate to say that the book was "compiled" out of a stack of example problems.

The author seems to have taken the idea that, "Students don't ever really read textbooks" to heart and crafted a book that simply cannot be read. The best you can do is browse through it, looking for examples that match what you're trying to do and studying them. His sample solutions are detailed, but they make little attempt to teach the intuition behind why certain steps are chosen. Nor can that intuition be learned from the main text of the chapter, as there is wretchedly little of it.

A horrible book; bad even by the low standards that math textbooks are generally held to.

This is one of the worst math textbooks I've had. There is very little explanation and the examples can be confusing because the auther often skips crucial steps.

This is one of the worst math textbooks I've had. There is very little explanation and the examples can be confusing because the auther often skips crucial steps.

I've only read the first four chapters of this book so far, but overall, I am enjoying the book. In order to give a sense of how difficult the book is (or perhaps how slow I am in picking up the material) - it sometimes takes me a full hour just to read 3 pages. Furthermore, sometimes, I have had to put the book down and reread the pages another day to be able to comprehend the material. This is with a goal of really trying to understand each page. My math background includes classes in Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Introductory Differential Equations. Each chapter has three sets of problems: chapter problems, theoretical problems, and self-test problems. The self-test problems have concise solutions that also can take a some time to understand. There are also a few typos here and there - not that many though. I would recommend this book only to those who are highly disciplined and persistent with studying math. I would also recommend finding a person knowledged in Probability for questions you'll definitely have. For me, I've had to also do a lot of the problems to really understand the material. Lastly, this book has been my first introduction to probability.

I am a mathematics and statistics double major and this is by far the worst and most confusing textbook I have ever used in my whole career. There is an excessive amount of example problems and the way the textbook solves the problems is highly confusing. It doesn't fully explain how they got the answer, but just states it. It is confusing, long, boring, and unhelpful. If you are looking for a good probability book, stay away from this one.

This text is much more illustrative and example laden than many earlier texts (i.e. Jayne's Probability) that I have use in the past.

You'd better be efficient at your calculus when you undertake this book. Don't expect much mathematical assistance, and be ready for many shortcuts. It has adequate exercises calling upon elementary to more complex skills in probability and statistics.

Every student like examples, but Ross over-uses them, to the point of insanity. He introduces most the material in the course of working specific problems (c.f. in the abstract). I, for one, think this is an extremely poor way to present mathematical material; after reading an example, you will have to distill the salient techniques and concepts from it. This can be quite difficult, since his examples are often quite involved, yet not worked with clarity and thoroughness. Thus, it's sometimes hard to see where the example ends and the theory starts; put another way, you'll understand what the author is doing with understanding *why* he's doing it.

Overall, I would avoid this text.

The title of this book is a bit of a misnomer. A more apt title would have been "First Graduate Course in Probability". The book description describes this as an introduction for students with an understanding of elementary calculus. That is just wrong. Very, very few people with a background in only elemetary Calculus are going to be able to follow this text, which presupposes advanced proof techniques like mathematical induction and a substantial level of mathematical maturity. In my own opinion, Ross is not a good expositor. For first time learners her explanations will seem sparse and her wordage ambiguous or unclear. More advanced studets will find her rapid fire presentation and her abstract approach to the subject very elegant. As other reviewers have mentioned she includes a disproportionate number of example problems which can be blessing or a curse depending on your tastes. I would recommend this to graduate students in mathematics as an alternative if they are struggling with their class text. I would not recommed this to the novice looking for a readable introduction to the subject. Try Bertsekas' "Introduction to Probability" instead.

Maybe I'm too used to the theorem-proof structure of other mathematics textbooks. This one leaves me cold: too little is made of the exposition, while the author leans too much on the copious amounts of examples as a crutch. The examples, alas, aren't terribly good; the author pulls ideas from god only knows where, without explanation, often stopping me short in the middle of reading the answer to what should be a simple problem.

I don't recommend this textbook. Sadly, I don't know of any better ones. The textbook recommended for the first actuarial exam - _Probability: The Science of Uncertainty_ - is a better book overall, but lacks the requisite depth for a really thorough treatment of the subject.

This was a textbook for a probability course that I took, and I did not find it very useful at all. The book is incredibly thick and large, but there is relatively little information in it. The extra bulk is not due to explanatory prose, discussion, or optional topics, but rather, an abundance of examples, some of which are good, but some of which are inappropriate and/or poorly carried out. In particular, I find that the order in which the examples are presented is not optimal, and the amount of examples on a given topic is not optimal either. There also needs to be much more discussion, instead of just going over specific problems.

Overall, the book is unreadable, even though it's at an elementary level.

The only redeeming quality of this book is that its exercises are fairly challenging, interesting, and there is a "self-test" section at the end of each chapter which provides fairly good explanations of how to carry out the problems.

My last criticism of this book is that it's clear that the publisher is trying to milk this for as much money as its worth--by the 7th edition, the book should be very refined, and honestly, looking at previous editions I see absolutely no improvement. I honestly question any book that goes beyond 3 or 4 editions...I think it's a money-making scam and you shouldn't waste your time with it when there are so many good texts on probability out there.

I am using this textbook as my primary resource for the first actuarial exam. It is nicely written with many examples and proofs. However, this book is not recommanded to intro-level probability students. To fully understand the material, it requires the reader to have a strong mathematical background.