Content: PREFACE INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW Making decisions under uncertainty Overview of this book PROBABILITY Sample space, events, and probability Rules of probability Equally likely outcomes. Combinatorics Conditional probability. Independence DISCRETE RANDOM VARIABLES AND THEIR DISTRIBUTIONS Distribution of a random variable Distribution of a random vector Expectation and variance Families of discrete distributions CONTINUOUS DISTRIBUTIONS Probability density Families of continuous distributions Central limit theorem COMPUTER SIMULATIONS AND MONTE CARLO METHODS Introduction Simulation of random variables Solving problems by Monte Carlo methods STOCHASTIC PROCESSES Definitions and classifications Markov processes and Markov chains Counting processes Simulation of stochastic processes QUEUING SYSTEMS Main components of a queuing system The Little's Law Bernoulli single-server queuing process M/M/1 system Multiserver queuing systems Simulation of queuing systems INTRODUCTION TO STATISTICS Population and sample, parameters and statistics Simple descriptive statistics Graphical statistics STATISTICAL INFERENCE Parameter estimation Confidence intervals Unknown standard deviation Hypothesis testing Bayesian estimation and hypothesis testing REGRESSION Least squares estimation Analysis of variance, prediction, and further inference Multivariate regression Model building APPENDIX Inventory of distributions Distribution tables Calculus review Matrices and linear systems Answers to selected exercises Index