Date: Monay Feb 8, 4:30pm Speaker: Michael Goldwasser Abstract: We will try to cover an entire year of probability theory in 90 minutes! Our main goal is to build up an understanding of techniques and tools which are common in the analysis of randomized algorithms. Starting (quickly) from the definition of probability spaces and events, we will examine independence, inclusion/exclusion, random variables, expectation, variance, and continue with many useful theorems including several tail inequalities. We will also look at some properties of common distributions.