Recommended Textbook to prepare for Exam P

If you've already studied a lot of the material for the exam, your best bet for preparing for the exam would now be a study manual. And, even if you haven't studied the material, it still may be a very good solution. A study manual will cover all the material on the exam and will have a large number of exam level problems, many of which are actual old exam problems, as well as solutions to all of the problems.

For most of the preliminary exams, I have heard that the ASM study manuals are the best. And, I have used ASM manuals for MFE and C and feel they are very good. However, the one exception is for Exam P, where the Actex study manual is commonly thought of as the best. You can buy these at ActexMadRiver.com.

Most textbooks will not have problems at the level of the exam unless they were specifically made with the exam in mind. Now, I know that the book Probability and Statistics with Applications: A Problem Solving Approach by Asimow and Maxwell does have old exam problems in the book. I didn't use it for Exam P, but did use it for Exam 3L (it was created to be used for both P and 3L). I liked it a lot and thought it was clear, though it did have a lot of typos. But, it's an actual textbook with proofs and such.

Another option is a study manual by Marcel Finan. He is a professor who made study manuals for all the preliminary exams. I have used his Exam FM book but not Exam P. But, what he did for Exam FM was use a textbook and a study manual and combined them into one book that covered everything on the exam, gave proofs like a textbook, but had exam level problems. Just google him to find the free PDFs. I'm guessing his Exam P manual is similar to what I described.