Probability via expectation

This book is a complete revision of the earlier work Probability which ap­ peared in 1970. While revised so radically and incorporating so much new material as to amount to a new text, it preserves both the aim and the approach of the original. That aim was stated as the provision of a 'first text in probability, de­ manding a reasonable but not extensive knowledge of mathematics, and taking the reader to what one might describe as a good intermediate level'. In doing so it attempted to break away from stereotyped applications, and consider applications of a more novel and significant character. The particular novelty of the approach was that expectation was taken as the prime concept, and the concept of expectation axiomatized rather than that of a probability measure. In the preface to the original text of 1970 (reproduced below, together with that to the Russian edition of 1982) I listed what I saw as the advantages of the approach in as unlaboured a fashion as I could. I also took the view that the text rather than the author should persuade, and left the text to speak for itself. It has, indeed, stimulated a steady interest, to the point that Springer-Verlag has now commissioned this complete reworking.