What Should I Study to Prepare for a Probabilistic Methods Course?

[PeteyCoco]

So I'm auditing a course titled Probabilistic Methods in Computer Science this fall and I want to know what kinds of things I should read to help me through it. The book that is being used is The Probabilistic Method by Alon and Spencer. The math I have is mostly calculus with some set theory and analysis, but it doesn't seem to be of much use here. I don't expect to understand everything, and the prof knows that, but I want to make a good attempt at it. What can I do to catch myself up? The outline is here: http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~chvatal/691D/

 

[Jorriss]

"Elementary calculus (finding extrema by differentiation, limits, l'Hôpital's rule, simple integrals)."

How are you with this?

 

[PeteyCoco]

"Elementary calculus (finding extrema by differentiation, limits, l'Hôpital's rule, simple integrals)."

How are you with this?

I'm good with that, I've finished advanced cal this past semester. It's the non-calc stuff that gives me pause; some of the notation in the proofs requires googling (look at page 4 of this http://www.amazon.com/dp/0470170204/?tag=pfamazon01-20 . What does the large V mean?)