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tjackson3
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I am (hopefully!) going to be entering grad school in the fall. I will be going for a PhD in applied mathematics. Many grad schools recommend that you take a course in probability before entering (it is strongly hinted that doing so will improve your odds of admission). Here's where the wrinkle comes in. I'm double majoring in math and physics. Within the physics department, I have had several classes that utilized and derived probability distributions (e.g. quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics). As a result, I've had a good deal of probability in my time as an undergraduate. In addition, I took AP Statistics waaaay back in my junior year of high school, so I've had a "formal" statistics class. Here is the course description of my school's Introduction to Probability class (listed as Statistics 4321, so it's an upper level course):
The only thing in this description that I have not had in some class or another is moments and moment generating functions. So my question is: Should I take this formal probability class in order to show that I've had it and maybe learn a couple of things I didn't know before but largely hit on topics I've already covered, or should I take a different class? Moreover, would not taking this class damage my grad school applications?
Thanks so much for your opinions!
Introduction to the theory of probability, counting rules, conditional probability, independence, additive and multiplicative laws, Bayes Rule. Discrete and continuous random variables, their distributions, moments and moment generating functions. Multivariate probability distributions, independence, covariance. Distributions of functions of random variables, sampling distributions, central limit theorem
The only thing in this description that I have not had in some class or another is moments and moment generating functions. So my question is: Should I take this formal probability class in order to show that I've had it and maybe learn a couple of things I didn't know before but largely hit on topics I've already covered, or should I take a different class? Moreover, would not taking this class damage my grad school applications?
Thanks so much for your opinions!