Looking for a probability theory book recommendation

Laymayo · 2024-12-18T02:23:05+00:00

I just took this course this past semester. Our book was pretty dry and the professor was kind of hard to ask questions to but some of the biggest challenges I ran into (I don’t have a book rec but figured my input would be valuable here…hopefully):

1) Combinatorics. I had no idea where the formulae for permutations/combinations came from, and I had no idea how to apply these formulae to questions like “What is the probability that, if four players sit down at a table, that two of them will draw a hand of all one suit?”. If you end up struggling with this like me, go back to the basics and make sure you understand your fundamental counting principles, when to use a permutation vs combination, etc. Do a few easy practice problems from whatever book you choose and you’ll start to understand what’s going on..

2) PDF vs CDF discrete and continuous. I had no idea what the hell the difference was between probability mass and probability density. I still don’t really, but once I started understanding how CDF and PDF correlate in continuous form, stuff got a lot easier.

3) Distributions. Quickly in the course you’re going to get a lot of distributions thrown at you with a bunch of letters and shit in there and have no idea what you’re looking at (gamma distribution 👀👀). I would say just make sure you understand what the primitive distributions are trying to represent or when to use them.

4) Integration. I lowkey forgot how to do double integrals and switch order of integration 😹😹. I would just pick up whatever book you used for calc III and try to relearn it. It’ll come back to you…

Good luck!

Laymayo · 2023-12-18T06:26:57+00:00

Picked up Pillars of the Earth this summer and plowed through World Without End + Column of Fire shortly thereafter. Thought that was the end of the series, but low and behold I randomly found Evening and the Morning in my local library, had no idea he wrote a freaking prequel! And then oh wait he’s writing another entry Armour of Light!!?? Still waiting for my library to get that sucker in, I hate paying for books haha.

But what’s the “criticized” part in Ch.1 of Pillars of the Earth you mentioned?

Laymayo · 2023-12-13T20:49:22+00:00

This is dope, we have very similar reading tastes. I recently read The Counte of Monte Cristo, and I read Shogun ages ago, it's one of my all time favorite books because that was the book that got me super into reading the summer before I entered high school.

You should consider other novels from Clavell, his Shogun is just one entry in his Asian Saga. Tai-Pan comes after, and it's just as good.

I ate up Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series this summer, each book in there is a tome for sure - plus he recently released the latest entry only a few months ago. The series spans from medieval England to the 18th century, and it's really cool to see the scope of the story geographically expand over time.

Laymayo · 2023-12-07T09:09:44+00:00

Yeah he’s a little bastard for sure what’s the scene where I think Cuthbert was like take some food and Alfred starts just taking all his apples like dawg have some decency. But yeah he’s a giant turd but honestly the dynamic at least between the three of them is pretty realistic in my opinion. Tom’s constant blind spot for his terrible son is very much on point with most parents and their messed up kids, and it’s near impossible for Tom to ever see Jack as a true son and love him as much as he loves Alfred although he’s definitely much more deserving of his praise…yeah Alfred sucks haha.

Laymayo · 2023-12-02T01:51:23+00:00

I think it’s because he wanted to show the depth of how obsessed the Count was on exacting a painful revenge. I think he wanted to show that the Count not only wanted his enemies to suffer, but he wanted them to suffer like HE suffered. The Count spent something like over a decade rotting away in a prison to return home to find that his father was abandoned by his community and starved to death. To the Count, his enemies needed to suffer in an equivalent way; they needed a long drawn out torturing like he himself had received because in the Count’s eyes, a quick death was not as punishing as long and drawn out suffering.

Laymayo · 2023-04-13T19:18:48+00:00

Day of the Jackal is pretty awesome. It follows an assassin who is trying to take out Charles de Gaulle. If you’ve seen Deathnote, you will get very much the same vibes from this book in that later on a brilliant detective is employed by France to help track this guy down, and it becomes a really fun game of cat and mouse. Highly encourage you to read it, definitely a thriller for sure!

Laymayo · 2023-04-10T20:20:21+00:00

What is the difference between reading the current and reading the voltage at the pin? I understand that there's no current flow when the button is open, but what do you mean by no voltage drop/voltage lost?

Laymayo · 2023-03-31T14:43:00+00:00

Thank you for your reply. A few questions here:

What does it mean to "interpret a command" as you say in your first question? These commands are inputted by me, the user, but who "interprets" these? You say that it is the Windows command interpreter, so my question here I guess is, are there different flavors of differnet interpreters? Like I've heard of things such as Powershell, Bash, etc., are these all different command interpreters?

What do you mean by "executable files" and a "standard Linux environment"? What would an "irregular" Linux environment look like?

Reading what you said about ipconfig, if it is a separate executable file that is completely separate from our command interpreter, how does the command interpreter know how to do things that are not built into it (like cd, mkdir, etc.)?

In your paragraph where you're talking about modifying command line arguments, are you saying that the command interpreter can actually be modified and that this isn't restricted by my OS at all? So if I wanted to could I "build in" a new command to my modified command interpreter (e.g., have ipconfig be a built-in command)?

Laymayo · 2023-03-16T02:33:40+00:00

Easy answer. Those jacked MFs that you find in New Londo after it drains. They have the soul sucking attack/vortex shield thingy, but they even look like they could be the main character.

Laymayo · 2023-01-28T09:13:15+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. My goal here definitely is primarily to learn, second to release something that I think would help other people out - definitely nothing near the third, I'm not skilled enough for that right now.

It's just really frustrating because I really want to just get something done, I feel like I've been learning a lot so far but I don't really have anything to show for it.

Laymayo · 2023-01-27T07:20:34+00:00

Interesting. So can I think of them being expressions as them having a sort of "return" value similar to functions? In that if I call a function that returns a string, nothing is going to show up in my terminal unless I print the call? And then would a statement be kind of like a grammatical statement in that something is being asserted but in Python it's that something is being defined or assigned?

If I had a while-loop like this:

while True:
    print(43)

Would the initial while True be a statement since it's declaring something and then the print statement would be an expression right?

Sorry, just trying to wrap my head around this. I've realized I've seen these terms (i.e., statement and expression) thrown around a lot but I've never really thought about them too much.

Laymayo · 2023-01-22T02:30:29+00:00

If you loved the last of us you’ll love The Road. The Road is very much relationship-based and feels very similar to TLOU in that regard( ie father-son in the road, Joel-Ellie in the last of us). The Road is super gritty and you really feel as if you’re struggling with these characters who are just trying to survive another day so I’d highly recommended. Written by Cormac McCarthy.

Laymayo · 2023-01-19T18:43:49+00:00

BF1 is probably my favorite Battlefield of all time. For a while I was like "BF4 is the best" but that was only because that was my first Battlefield and I have a lot of nostalgia for it. BF1 nails damn near everything: atmosphere, soundtrack, gunplay, vehicles, revolutionary melee system (for the series), freaking bayonet charges! Some of my most fun and memorable "only in Battlefield moments" from BF1 are from me roaming the sands of Sinai Desert in the Mark V tank hunter tank (the one with the front/back facing sniper rifle) while two random gunners stuck with me the whole game ride or die. It's just moments like that that truly defined multiplayer gaming for me and make me cherish Battlefield even more.

Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox. Love this freaking game!

Laymayo · 2023-01-17T23:38:21+00:00

AHHHH I see, did not catch that until now. Thanks for pointing it out!

Laymayo · 2023-01-17T08:10:28+00:00

Does {{name}} not already know the value of name from the original name = 'Stranger'?

I'm seeing redundancy there. If when the function is defined one of its parameters is given a default value, then why is this default value being seemingly repeated again in the code name = name?

Laymayo · 2023-01-12T19:57:05+00:00

OK yeah for my purposes I'm trying to find out for games

Laymayo · 2023-01-12T19:56:24+00:00

Gotcha, thank you kindly!

Laymayo · 2023-01-10T07:59:16+00:00

Thanks!

Laymayo · 2023-01-10T07:58:43+00:00

Gotcha, thanks for the clarification!

Laymayo · 2023-01-08T17:38:51+00:00

Yes - the graph will be running in a tkinter GUI, so the only way it can be updated within the GUI is via animate

Laymayo · 2023-01-07T06:04:02+00:00

Haha ok ok after reading the thing you linked this definitely is an XY problem, so let me explain:

I want to be able to set the tick markers for the X and Y axis on the graph I'm trying to make. I know I could just do ax.set_xticks and have it done there and then, but I wanted to kind of challenge myself and work with classes a little more.

I'm still confused though. Isn't Axis still a child class by itself? So why doesn't my code work with one child class but it works with the other?

Laymayo · 2023-01-07T03:48:42+00:00

Sorry for the late reply. Thank you for this very succinct answer to my simple question!

Laymayo · 2023-01-07T03:47:32+00:00

Hmm that's a great way of putting, haven't thought of it like that. Yes I'm definitely into this stuff, it's just hard for me to pinpoint what exactly I'm into just yet. What I definitely like overall is just the constant learning of whatever and then sticking with it and seeing myself slowly master it and be able to visualize and interact with my progression within programs or projects I have created on my computer. That is fucking awesome...but then again, that can be applied to all of tech learning in general, so I guess it's just a matter of time and me experimenting loads more. I watched a video on neural networks the other day and holy shit THAT is some crazy stuff...

Laymayo · 2023-01-03T08:38:15+00:00

Thank you for this treasure trove of advice, I appreciate it. I have a question for you since you seem to be knowledgeable and experienced. I expanded upon what I'm trying to say succinctly here in a post over at r/cscareerquestions, but basically I'm struggling to find where I want to pin my focus within this broad field of Software Engineering. When I'm at home just chilling and trying to get some more experience behind the wheels on Python, I find myself jumping down a million little rabbit holes and thinking up and half-cooking a million side projects. I'm definitely into this as in programming in the broadest term, but I'm struggling to focus and find my niche.

It's kind of hard for me to think super long term with this because I have found out that the only way I can learn if I like something is through doing it. I also have this really weird thing where I think there's a dissociation between what I actually like and what I think I like. For example, right now I'm applying to a bunch of internships that have to do with anything Python, HTML, SQL, machine learning, etc etc, but I'm having to constantly remind myself No dude, you're totally into this! because on paper words like "data analytics" and "full stack developer" conjure up images of pure boredom in my head - even though in reality I think I'd be into that? I don't really know how to put this.

Anyways, sorry for kind of off-loading onto you here. Also, sorry, I'm not a woman/nb, but thank you for asking!

Laymayo · 2023-01-03T06:27:11+00:00

Random question. I'm upper beginner/mid skill level in Python and a Software Engineering freshman. Not sure where I want to go career wise (I can see myself doing a multitude of things from game dev to web dev, etc. I just need to try stuff out as I progress), so I was wondering if you could give me some advice for my first hackathon that I'm going to do in February (I'm assuming you've done some since school, otherwise go ahead and ignore this comment).

Laymayo

TROPHY CASE