CS 107, Probability, Spring 2024

Lecture 01

Michael Poghosyan
mpoghosyan@aua.am

AUA

17 January 2024

Michael Poghosyan mpoghosyan@aua.am CS 107, Probability, AUA Spring 2024

Welcome to the 2024 AUA Probability A
Course!

Happy New Year and Semester ⌣

¨

Michael Poghosyan mpoghosyan@aua.am CS 107, Probability, AUA Spring 2024

Content
Syllabus Highlights
Intro to Probability

Michael Poghosyan mpoghosyan@aua.am CS 107, Probability, AUA Spring 2024

About the Instructor
Mean guy, not doing curving at the end of the course, not
adding bonus point problems for the Final
Graduated YSU, Department of Mathematics
PhD in Mathematics
Joined AUA as an Adjunct Associate Professor in 2013
Interests: Math, Statistics, ML, Teaching, Organizing
Summer Schools, Music, ...

Michael Poghosyan mpoghosyan@aua.am CS 107, Probability, AUA Spring 2024

Syllabus Highlights
Course name: CS 107, Probability
No. of Credits: 3
Instructor: MP
Instructor’s Office: #336W, PAB
Instructor’s OH: MW 10:30-11:25, and by an appointment
Teaching Associate: Tigran Chtchyan
PSS day/time: TBD
TA’s OH: TBD
Communication: Slack Channel for our course!

Michael Poghosyan mpoghosyan@aua.am CS 107, Probability, AUA Spring 2024

Course Materials
Moodle Page: ready
Moodle Enrollment Key: CS$107-a
Syllabus: uploaded to our Moodle page
Textbooks: uploaded to our Moodle page
Software: R and R Studio (freeware)

Michael Poghosyan mpoghosyan@aua.am CS 107, Probability, AUA Spring 2024

Syllabus Highlights, Cont’d
Exams: 2 Midterms and a Final Exam
Midterm 1 Date: Saturday, Feb 24, 09:00 - 11:00,
Midterm 2 Date: Saturday, Apr 13, 11:00 - 13:00,
Homework: (almost) weekly, due on Fridays (???)
Quizzes: Yeah, we will have them! At most once a week.
Q and HW: The lowest Quiz grade will be dropped. No
HW grade will be dropped.

Michael Poghosyan mpoghosyan@aua.am CS 107, Probability, AUA Spring 2024

Syllabus Highlights, Cont’d
Final Grade Formula:

Total = 0.2 · (MT1 + MT2) + 0.1 · (HW + Q) + 0.4 · F

Passing grade: ≥ 60
No Makeups for Quizzes! Sorry!
No late HWs (except in some veeery special cases)
No Grades Curving. ⌢ ¨
In case cheating is detected, the grade for the assignment
will be downgraded to 0 (for both the person who is
copying and the person from whom he/she is copying)
and/or the course grade will be fixed to be F.

Michael Poghosyan mpoghosyan@aua.am CS 107, Probability, AUA Spring 2024

Bonus Info
Advice: Always ask your questions during lectures, attend
OHs, solve HW by yourself!
Please add a photo to your Slack channel profile.
We have a #Discussion channel in Slack. Ask your
questions there, be active there, answer to others
questions, add comments to our topics, and you can get
up to 5 bonus points at the end of the course based on
your activity during classes, office hours and on Slack.

Michael Poghosyan mpoghosyan@aua.am CS 107, Probability, AUA Spring 2024

QA Session

Questions?

Your expectations?

Michael Poghosyan mpoghosyan@aua.am CS 107, Probability, AUA Spring 2024

Course Topics at a glance
Random Experiments, Events, Probability Axioms and
Properties
Basic Probability Models
Conditional Probability and Independence
Repeated Trials Models
Random Variables (RVs), their Characteristics
Important Discrete and Continuous RVs
Random Vectors (Jointly Distributed RVs)
Partial Numerical Characteristics of RVs
Limit Theorems
Conditional Distributions
Markov Chains

Michael Poghosyan mpoghosyan@aua.am CS 107, Probability, AUA Spring 2024

Intro to Probability
Q: What is Probability (theory)?
A: It is a Mathematical Theory to model the uncertainty. We
will consider Experiments with more than one outcomes. The
uncertainty can be because:
the Experiment is not performed yet, it will be performed
in the future;
the Experiment is already done, but we do not know the
result, outcome.
Example: What is the Probability that the closing price of 1
Apple Stock on Jan 22, 2024, will be greater than 189$ ?
Example: What is the Probability that there is a life in our
Universe, besides our planet?
Note: Even the outcome of the Experiment is not known, still
we want to (and hopefully, we can) get some information, assess
some Probabilities.
Michael Poghosyan mpoghosyan@aua.am CS 107, Probability, AUA Spring 2024
Intro to Probability
Q: Why we need to study the Probability (theory)?
A: Because of its use in different aspects of life and science:
in Statistics
in Medicine and Biology
in Insurance
in Finance
in Data Science and Machine Learning
in Computer Science
in Physics
in Lotteries and Betting ⌢ ¨
as a core course in our Curriculum ⌣ ¨

Michael Poghosyan mpoghosyan@aua.am CS 107, Probability, AUA Spring 2024