Probability and Stochastic Processes: A Friendly Introduction for Electrical and Computer Engineers, 3rd Edition

Preface

Welcome to the third edition

You are reading the third edition of our textbook. Although the fundamentals of probability and stochastic processes have not changed since we wrote the first edition, the world inside and outside universities is different now than it was in 1998. Outside of academia, applications of probability theory have expanded enormously in the past 16 years. Think of the 20 billion+ Web searches each month and the billions of daily computerized stock exchange transactions, each based on probability models, many of them devised by electrical and computer engineers.

Universities and secondary schools, recognizing the fundamental importance of probability theory to a wide range of subject areas, are offering courses in the subject to younger students than the ones who studied probability 16 years ago. At Rutgers, probability is now a required course for Electrical and Computer Engineering sophomores.

We have responded in several ways to these changes and to the suggestions of students and instructors who used the earlier editions. The first and second editions contain material found in postgraduate as well as advanced undergraduate courses. By contrast, the printed and e-book versions of this third edition focus on the needs of undergraduates studying probability for the first time. The more advanced material in the earlier editions, covering random signal processing and Markov chains, is available at the companion website (www.wiley.com/college/yates