Probability with R, by Jane M. Horgan, Hoboken, New Jersey, John Wiley and Sons, 2009, xviii+393 pp., £62.50 or US$99.95 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-4702-8073-5
This book is intended as an introductory textbook on probability for graduate students in computer science, but this reviewer believes that it would be very useful for anyone who wants to get into the subject. It is a well-written and easy to read book and includes numerous examples, figures and exercises. The exposition is very clear and motivates the reader to solve projects, which can be found at the end of some sections. In addition, supplementary materials and resources for students and instructors can be downloaded from the website http://www.janehorgan.com.
The book consists of 20 chapters, divided into five parts, three appendices and an index. In the first part (Chapters 1–3), the author gives a brief introduction to the R language and presents some basic functions for working with descriptive statistics and for graphically displaying data. The second part (Chapters 4–8) introduces the reader to some fundamental concepts such as probability, conditional and posterior probability, the law of total probability, Bayes rule and reliability. Also, some applications in computer science are presented through various examples. The third part (Chapters 9–14) and fourth part (Chapters 15–19) deal with discrete and continuous distributions respectively. These parts start with basic concepts of random variables with discrete and continuous distributions, such as cumulative distribution function, expectation, variance and quantile function. Then the most important distributions are introduced and their applications in computer science are discussed. The fifth part (Chapter 20) is devoted to Markov and Chebyshev inequalities. The book finishes with a useful index.
There are several typos and minor errors, but they do not affect the quality of this book. In summary, this reviewer enjoyed reading the book and he recommend it to everyone who wants to learn about probability.