Professor Oliver Johnson

This is the web page for first half of the Level 1 course 'Probability and Statistics' lectured by Professor Oliver Johnson of the School of Mathematics of Bristol University.

Lectures take place throughout teaching block 1 apart from Reading Week (Week 6).

Lectures: Monday 1pm Victoria Rooms, then either Tuesday 11am Priory Road LT or Wednesday 10am Priory Road 2D1 (check your timetable)

Problem classes: Friday 11am Priory Road LT

Optional drop-in sessions: 12pm Tuesdays G83 Fry Building or send me an email to try to fix a meeting at other times.

A more detailed description of the course including syllabus, suggested reading and unit aims.

There will be two assessed quizzes counting for 5% credit, deadlines midday on Thursday 19th October (Week 4) and 17th November (Week 8)

Lecture notes

Revision sessions: 2018 exam and 2018 exam solutions

This material is copyright of the University of Bristol unless explicitly stated otherwise. It is provided exclusively for educational purposes at the University and is to be downloaded or copied for your private study only.

A First Course in Probability by S. Ross (copies available in the Queens Building library)

Lecture 1: Humans are not good at generating random numbers -- see guessing game

Lecture 2: Ramsey's theorem (see also Quanta magazine)

Class 1: Birthday problem

Lecture 3: MIT Blackjack Team

Lecture 4: Lateral flow test positivity - see also (Conditional) Probability is likely to confuse people

Lecture 5: German tank problem -- see also my Substack post

Lecture 6: 10 pin bowling

Class 2: Beating roulette

Lecture 7: Double your money?

Lecture 8: Monty Hall Problem

Lecture 9: Fermi estimation

Lecture 10: Drake equation

Class 3: Fighting a truel

Lecture 11: Benford's Law: Testing Benford's law

Lecture 12: Spurious correlations

Class 4: Infinite Jest tennis match

Lecture 13: Risk win probabilities

Lecture 14: Alan Turing and probability

Lecture 15: Taskmaster donut game

Lecture 16: Quincunx

Class 5: How to win the lottery by using maths

Lecture 17: Random walks and electrical networks

Lecture 18: Bertrand paradox

Lecture 19: questionnaires

Lecture 20: Metcheck snow probabilities, Bank of England inflation predictions, climate change scenarios

Class 6: Numbercrunch