<p>I'm taking Stat 134 next semester, and I have absolutely no stat experience. I know the course is tough, and I am wondering if there is any way that I can prepare in any way for the upcoming challenge.</p>
<p>Ugh, no. I would rather spend winter break doing something more productive, you know, like catching up on sleep lol. But seriously, if you really want to prepare for 134, why don’t you get a copy of Pitman’s and just start to read it? Stats 134 is not really “stats”, and you certainly don’t need Stats 20 or 21 in order to do well in it. Probability is one of those subjects that you need to have lots and lots of practice so you can see right through which distribution/formula to use during the exam and not panic. I’d suggest reading Pitman’s if you want to get an upper hand, since it will save you some reading time during the semester and you can just focus entirely on solving the homework and additional problems once the class starts.</p>
<p>It’s a pretty darn tough class. Got my butt kicked this semester.</p>
<p>How much series do I need to know? Should I review it from Math 1B?</p>
<p>Be comfortable with the typical one - geometric series when you do proof of expectation/variance of geometric random variables, and probably Taylor series expansion for some common terms, sin cos e^x, though I don’t recall seeing them. </p>
<p>I would say the most important thing about Stats134 is first to be solid with your algebra, and after that be able to think about the problem in many, many new and different ways. You may not have seen a problem in calculus derived in many different ways, but something as simple as the variance of a geom r.v. can be derived in at least three different ways, all of which are elegant.</p>