Measure Theoretic Probability

This textbook offers an approachable introduction to measure-theoretic probability, illustrating core concepts with examples from statistics and engineering. The author presents complex concepts in a succinct manner, making otherwise intimidating material approachable to undergraduates who are not necessarily studying mathematics as their major. Throughout, readers will learn how probability serves as the language in a variety of exciting fields. Specific applications covered include the coupon collector’s problem, Monte Carlo integration in finance, data compression in information theory, and more.

Intended as a self-contained introduction to measure theory, this textbook also includes a comprehensive treatment of integration on locally compact Hausdorff spaces, the analytic and Borel subsets of Polish spaces, and Haar measures on locally compact groups. This second edition includes a chapter on measure-theoretic probability theory, plus brief treatments of the Banach-Tarski paradox, the Henstock-Kurzweil integral, the Daniell integral, and the existence of liftings.

This book is a text at the introductory graduate level, for use in the one­ semester or two-quarter probability course for first-year graduate students that seems ubiquitous in departments of statistics, biostatistics, mathemat­ ical sciences, applied mathematics and mathematics. While it is accessi­ ble to advanced ("mathematically mature") undergraduates, it could also serve, with supplementation, for a course on measure-theoretic probability. Students who master this text should be able to read the "hard" books on probability with relative ease, and to proceed to further study in statistics or stochastic processes.

Probability, Random Processes, and Ergodic Properties is for mathematically inclined information/communication theorists and people working in signal processing. It will also interest those working with random or stochastic processes, including mathematicians, statisticians, and economists.

Measure theory and integration are presented to undergraduates from the perspective of probability theory. The first chapter shows why measure theory is needed for the formulation of problems in probability, and explains why one would have been forced to invent Lebesgue theory (had it not already existed) to contend with the paradoxes of large numbers. The measure-theoretic approach then leads to interesting applications and a range of topics that include the construction of the Lebesgue measure on R [superscript n] (metric space approach), the Borel-Cantelli lemmas, straight measure theory (the Lebesgue integral). Chapter 3 expands on abstract Fourier analysis, Fourier series and the Fourier integral, which have some beautiful probabilistic applications: Polya's theorem on random walks, Kac's proof of the Szegö theorem and the central limit theorem. In this concise text, quite a few applications to probability are packed into the exercises.