Problems in Probability

Problems in Probability comprises one of the most comprehensive, nearly encyclopedic, collections of problems and exercises in probability theory. Albert Shiryaev has skillfully created, collected, and compiled the exercises in this text over the course of many years while working on topics which interested him the most. A substantial number of the exercises resulted from diverse sources such as textbooks, lecture notes, exercise manuals, monographs, and discussions that took place during special seminars for graduate and undergraduate students. Many problems contain helpful hints and other relevant comments and a portion of the material covers some important applications from optimal control and mathematical finance. Readers of diverse backgrounds from students to researchers will find a great deal of value in this book and can treat the work as an exercise manual, a handbook, or as a supplementary text to a course in probability theory, control, and mathematical finance. §The problems and exercises in this book vary in nature and degree of difficulty. Some problems are meant to test the reader s basic understanding, others are of medium-to-high degrees of difficulty and require more creative thinking. Other problems are meant to develop additional theoretical concepts and tools or to familiarize the reader with various facts that are not necessarily covered in mainstream texts. Additional problems are related to the passage from random walk to Brownian motions and Brownian bridges. The appendix contains a summary of the main results, notation and terminology that are used throughout the book. It also contains additional material from combinatorics, potential theory and Markov chains subjects that are not covered in the book, but are nevertheless needed for many of the exercises included here.For the first two editions of the book Probability (GTM 95), each chapter included a comprehensive and diverse set of relevant exercises. While the work on the third edition was still in progress, it was decided that it would be more appropriate to publish a separate book that would comprise all of the exercises from previous editions, in addition to many new exercises.§Most of the material in this book consists of exercises created by Shiryaev, collected and compiled over the course of many years while working on many interesting topics. Many of the exercises resulted from discussions that took place during special seminars for graduate and undergraduate students. Many of the exercises included in the book contain helpful hints and other relevant information.§Lastly, the author has included an appendix at the end of the book that contains a summary of the main results, notation and terminology from Probability Theory that are used throughout the present book. This Appendix also contains additional material from Combinatorics, Potential Theory and Markov Chains, which is not covered in the book, but is nevertheless needed for many of the exercises included here.