[Math] Undergraduate Probability Topics

Question

I am teaching undergraduate probability this semester, and I am looking for some suggestions about inspiring applications that could be reasonably covered over the course of two one-hour lectures or less. For example, here are two very cool topics I covered last time I taught this course:

• Search engines and Markov chains; AMS' description and The $25 billion eigenvector
• Benford's Law and the Pareto Distribution

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Here is another suggestion involving Markov chains: Example 1 in Diaconis' The Markov Chain Monte Carlo revolution. This is a very surprising application of MCMC to decoding messages exchanged between interns in California's prision system.