Instructor: Adam S. Sikora
(Math Dept.)
Class meets: Tue, Thu 9:35am-10:50am, over Zoom. Zoom link will be provided by email and at ublearns. Students are expected to be present.
My office hours: Thu 11-noon or by appointment, over Discord server or Zoom.
Class announcements will be sent to you via email. Please check your UB email daily.
Text: Fundamentals of Probability, with Stochastic Processes, by Saeed Ghahramani. 4th, 3rd, or 2nd edition.
(However, there are many books covering similar material, eg. very compact Schaum's Outlines of Probability and Statistics.)
Tentative topics: axioms of probability, conditional probability, Bayes' Theorem, independence, random variables (continuous and discrete), distribution functions, expectation, variance, covariance, correlation, special distributions, Central Limit theorems.
Preliminary Test Schedule: 1st week of Oct, 1st week of Nov, Dec 10.
Detailed test arrangments will be announced later.
You are expected to take each test as scheduled, unless you have a
documented medical or other valid excuse. Contact me before taking an exam if you are seriously ill.
Quizzes: There may be a simple quiz in class. No makeups will be given, but the lowest mark will be dropped without penalty.
Homework: Online at UBLearns, Webwork (an online homework system) and possibly Gradescope (for written HW submission). Details coming soon. No late homework will be accepted.
Discord Server for group chat, on the web: discord.com , Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS. I strongly enourage you to set up an account. Invite to our server will be sent by email.
Any questions related to the course content or procedures of a non-personal nature should be asked on the discord server.
Posting complete HW solutions before they are due is not allowed.
For personal issues, use Email: adam.s.sikora at gmail.
Final grade will be based on
The total:
90% (total) guarantees A,
88% guarantees A-,
80% guarantees B,
70% guarantees C,
60% guarantees D. (B+,B-,C+,C- will also be utilized.)
The final grades may be curved. However, there will be no extra credit.
Given the special circumstances: virtual teaching mode and a novel cross-departmental nature of this course,
this syllabus may change.
Academic integrity is a fundamental university value. Students caught cheating on exams, quizzes or HW will be penalized.
Incomplete: Incompletes will only be given for reasons beyond your control, serious illness. You must be passing the course to get an incomplete.
University policy is that if you receive an 'I' grade (incomplete), then you
are also assigned a default grade, which is the grade you have already earned
averaged with a 0 on the remaining work. It is easy to see that even
a good student will normally receive an 'F' as the default grade. This appears
on your transcript, as 'I/F', until you make up the incomplete or 15 months
elapse, when you would receive the default grade (you would receive the F in
this example).
Students who received an incomplete in a
previous class should not register for this class, but must file a petition form with the Math Department.