Preface

This book is an introduction to the theory of statistical probability and distributions.

Statistical software

This book can be read without relying on any specific statistical software, though sometimes R code (R Core Team 2023) is included to demonstrate ideas, and to discuss simulation.

Callouts used on this book

The callouts used in this book have meanings; for example:

These chunks introduce the objectives for the chapters of the book.

These chunks highlight common mistakes or warnings, about a particular concept or about using a formula.

These chunks offer helpful information.

These chunks refer to text that is relevant to using the R statistical software.

These chunks give you some questions to think about.

Who can use this book?

This textbook is free for anyone to use: There is no charge for students, instructors or institutions.

Although not essential, an email to the author (explaining how the textbook is being used, who is using the textbook, and your thoughts on the textbook) would be appreciated: pdunn2 <at> usc.edu.au.

How this book was made

This book was made using R (R Core Team 2023), and the bookdown package (Y. Xie 2023a), which is based on Markdown syntax, using knitr (Y. Xie 2023b).

Learning Outcomes

In this book, you will learn to:

  • apply rules, theorems and concepts to compute probabilities.
  • describe probability and distribution functions.
  • apply concepts of mathematical expectation.
  • apply and work with standard discrete and continuous distributions, including computing of probabilities.
  • apply and work with bivariate and multivariate distributions.
  • determine probability functions and distribution functions of transformed radon variables.
  • apply and work with standard sampling distributions.
  • use R to produce relevant plots and compute probabilities.

How to cite this book

Peter K. Dunn (2024). The theory of distributions. https://bookdown.org/pkaldunn/DistTheory

The CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence is applied to this textbook.

Peter K. Dunn
Sippy Downs, Australia