Probability Puzzles

Follow @ProbabilityPuz If you are looking to learn time series analysis, the following are some of the best books in time series analysis. Introductory Time Series with R (Use R!) This is good book to get one started on time series. A nice aspect of this book is that it has examples in R and some of the data is part of standard R packages which makes good introductory material for learning the R language too. That said this is not exactly a graduate level book, and some of the data links in the book may not be valid. Econometrics A great book if you are in an economics stream or want to get into it. The nice thing in the book is it tries to bring out a oneness in all the methods used. Econ majors need to be up-to speed on the grounding mathematics for time series analysis to use this book. Outside of those prerequisites, this is one of the best books on econometrics and time series analysis. Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (Information Science and Statis...

Follow @ProbabilityPuz The following are two puzzles which look tough at first but have quick and really elegant solutions. Q1: Ants on a wire: A large number of ants are on a wire of length \(L\). All ants start moving randomly, either right or left with a fixed velocity \(V\). If they collide they turn around and move in the opposite direction. Ants at the ends of the wire fall off. What is the time taken for all ants to fall off the wire? Q2: The Unruly Passenger: Several passengers are in a queue to board a plane. The first passenger in the queue is an unruly one and chooses a seat at random. Subsequent passengers take their allotted seat if it is unoccupied or pick a seat at random if it is occupied. What is the probability that the last passenger gets to sit on his allotted seat? Statistics: A good book to learn statistics A1: This seemingly complex problem has an elegantly simple solution. The fact that they collide and turn around is the same as if they wa...