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Probability theory
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Probability theory
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Academic year 2020/2021
- Course ID
- MAT0034
- Teaching staff
- Prof. Laura Sacerdote (Lecturer)
Prof. Federico Polito (Lecturer)
Prof. Bruno Toaldo (Lecturer) - Year
- 1st year
- Teaching period
- First semester
- Type
- D.M. 270 TAF B - Distinctive
- Credits/Recognition
- 9
- Course disciplinary sector (SSD)
- MAT/06 - probabilita' e statistica matematica
- Delivery
- Formal authority
- Language
- English
- Attendance
- Mandatory
- Type of examination
- Written and oral
- Prerequisites
- An undergraduate level class in Probability and good knowledge of real analysis. Good abilities in elementary probabilistic problem solving are also necessary for the success in this class.
- Propedeutic for
- Stochastic Processes, Statistics for Stochastic Processes and EDS-Stochastic Dfferential Equations use concepts and tools introduced in this course.
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Sommario del corso
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Course objectives
Topics taught in this class are essential tools required to a statistician and a probabilist. They are fundamental for any modern mathematician. Students re-think to subjects of their undergraduate studies with a different level of abstraction.This new approach allows them to control some advanced methods of probability theory, useful for applications as wel as for research.
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Results of learning outcomes
Knowledge and Understanding
Students attain a detailed knowledge of the foundations of modern theory of probability and related topics in measure theory.
Applying Knowledge and Understanding
Students attain good ability in probabilistic problem solving becoming able to deal both with theoretical and applied problems related with conditional expectation, convergence features, characteristic functions and martingales.
Making Judgements and Learning Skills
Students become able to prove new results related with the studied theory and to deepen topics by looking at suitable scientific articles and alternative textbooks.
Communication Skills
Students become able to properly use English and probability to correctly present in written and oral forms their theoretical studies and the results of exercises and homeworks.
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Course delivery
The course is composed of 72 hours of lectures (including 16 hours of exercises) which, for the AY 2020/2021, will be held remotely, either as live streaming or pre-recorded. All lectures will be recorded and made available on Moodle in due time, together with the related slides or notes and other course material.
Some additional activities to favour direct interaction between professors and students may be organised as online meetings and/or meetings in presence, under appropriate conditions of social distancing and compatibly and in compliance with future existing regulations. For meetings in presence, students who are not able to be physically present will have the chance to follow such activities through the online course material.
Note that the recorded lessons, together with all the available material, are available at the Moodle page of the course (please follow the link at the very bottom of this page).
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Learning assessment methods
The final exam includes both a written and an oral test. The written test is valid until the following oral exam and requires the solution of two exercises and the proof of a theorem, proposition, property (selected from those discussed during lectures). It is mandatory to pass this test to be admitted to the oral test. Only for the winter session, the written test is reduced to one exercise on martingales and the proof of a theorem if the student has passed the homeworks given during the lessons. The use of textbooks and personal notes during the written test is not allowed. The oral examination includes a discussion on the written test as well as two questions. The list of the possible questions for the oral examination will be provided in advance. For the A.Y. 2020/2021 the final grade is determined in the following way: let x = MAX(grade of written exam, grade of oral exam), y = MIN(grade of written exam, grade of oral exam); the final grade is given by z = 0.7*x + 0.3*y and then rounding it to the closest integer.
Students must register on the exams web-page to be admitted to the written/oral exams (in time). Unregistered students will not be admitted to exams being impossible to register their final mark.
During the Covid-19 emergency the learning assessment method will consist of a written exam followed by an oral exam via Webex video conference system. More specific instructions will be sent to students registered to the exam via their institutional email addresses.
Winter session exams (January and February) will be conducted online via Webex video conference system.
Summer session exams (June and July) will be conducted online via Webex video conference system.
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Support activities
The course include exercises classes; extra exercises are suggested as homework.
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Program
- Overview of elementary probability
- Construction of probability measures on R and random variables
- Integrals with respect to probability measures
- Independent random variables
- Distributions on Rn
- Sums of random variables
- 0-1 Laws
- Convergence of sequences of random variables
- Weak convergence and characteristic functions
- Laws of large numbers and central limit theorem
- Conditional expectations
- Discrete time martingales
- Optional stopping
- Doob decomposition
- Martingale inequalities
- Convergence properties of discrete time martingales
- Introduction to continuous time martingales
Suggested readings and bibliography
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Textbooks:
- Çınlar, E., "Probability and Stochastics", Springer, 2011.
- Durrett, R., "Probability: Theory and Examples", Cambridge, 2010.
Further suggested books:
- Williams, D., "Probability with Martingales", Cambridge University Press, 2001;
- Shiryaev, A.N., "Probability", Springer, 1996;
- Billingsey, P., "Probability and Measure", Wiley-Interscience, 1995;
- Feller, W. "Introduction to Probability Theory and Applications", 2 Volumes, Wiley, 2008;
- Varadhan, S.R.S., "Probability Theory", AMS, 2001;
- Jacod, J., Protter, P., "Probability Essentials", Springer, 2004.
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Class schedule
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