Product Description

The fourth edition of Probability, Random Variables and Stochastic Processes has been updated significantly from the previous edition, and it now includes co-author S. Unnikrishna Pillai of Polytechnic University. The book is intended for a senior/graduate level course in probability and is aimed at students in electrical engineering, math, and physics departments. The authors' approach is to develop the subject of probability theory and stochastic processes as a deductive discipline and to illustrate the theory with basic applications of engineering interest. Approximately 1/3 of the text is new material--this material maintains the style and spirit of previous editions. In order to bridge the gap between concepts and applications, a number of additional examples have been added for further clarity, as well as several new topics.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #666011 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Amazon.com Review
This text is a classic in probability, statistics, and estimation and in the application of these fields to modern engineering problems. Probability, Random Variables, and Stochastic Processes assumes a strong college mathematics background. The first half of the text develops the basic machinery of probability and statistics from first principles while the second half develops applications of the basic theory. Topics in the first section include probability distributions and densities, random variables and vectors, expectations, covariance, correlations, functions of random variables and vectors, and conditional distributions and densities. In this third edition of the text, the second half of the book has been substantially updated and expanded to include new or revised discussions of the following topics: mean square estimation, likelihood tests, maximum entropy methods, Monte Carlo techniques, spectral representations and estimation, sampling theory, bispectra and system identification, cyclostationary processes, deterministic signals in noise, and the Wiener and Kalman filters. Probability, Random Variables, and Stochastic Processes covers a remarkable density of material and the clarity of both presentation and notation make this book invaluable as a text and a reference.

Customer Reviews

Good book with the help of a good instructor
After reading almost all reviews, I actually think I agree with almost all including the ones that say it is not a book for beginners and ones that say that it is a great book written by a very knowledgeable author. As a student who just completed a course in this subject with this book as the text, here is what I would like to say:
1. My instructor re-ordered some of the content of the text for his course. It seemed necessary to understand certain concepts.
2. As one of the previous reviews mentioned, some of the important aspects of probability theory were hidden in problems, these were brought out by the instructor either as homeworks or as part of lecture notes and explained. This also means that it is not enough to just read this text and understand the examples. It is almost as important to go through the problems to get the complete picture
3. All in all I liked the book but I sure would not have liked it as much if I did not have a good instructor to go with it. Definitely not a self-study book.

great book in the classical textbook sense
i would like to again point out that while this book is excellent as a reference, it's not very good to read cover-to-cover. Papoulis is extremely knowledgeable in this area, and this book is, in fact, the FIRST EVER book of stochastic/random variables and processes written for the engineers. unfortunately, despite the excellent material, the presentation and coverage is sometimes hard to follow, and hides the true gem in this book.

Plenty Of Examples. Great Detail
This book has a huge pool of examples that enables the reader to understand the concept better. The subject itself is "NOT TRIVIAL", however if it wasn't for this book, it could have been worse. I own this book and I liked it. The examples are fairly easy to understand and relevant to the end of chapter problems. There is also a web site for this book that has a lot of additional resources. So if you are thinking of buying this book, then go for it. (Please Note that I am writing this review for the Fourth Edition Hardcover by Papoulis and Pillai. Previous edition is not that good)