Book excerpt: This book provides engineers with focused treatment of the mathematics needed to understand probability, random variables, and stochastic processes, which are essential mathematical disciplines used in communications engineering. The author explains the basic concepts of these topics as plainly as possible so that people with no in-depth knowledge of these mathematical topics can better appreciate their applications in real problems. Applications examples are drawn from various areas of communications. If a reader is interested in understanding probability and stochastic processes that are specifically important for communications networks and systems, this book serves his/her need.