Applied Statistics and Probability for Engineers, 6th Edition

The Role of Statistics in Engineering

Chapter Outline

1-1 The Engineering Method and Statistical Thinking

1-2 Collecting Engineering Data

1-2.1 Basic Principles

1-2.2 Retrospective Study

1-2.3 Observational Study

1-2.4 Designed Experiments

1-2.5 Observing Processes Over Time

1-3 Mechanistic and Empirical Models

1-4 Probability and Probability Models

Statistics is a science that helps us make decisions and draw conclusions in the presence of variability. For example, civil engineers working in the transportation field are concerned about the capacity of regional highway systems. A typical problem related to transportation would involve data regarding this specific system's number of nonwork, home-based trips, the number of persons per household, and the number of vehicles per household. The objective would be to produce a trip-generation model relating trips to the number of persons per household and the number of vehicles per household. A statistical technique called regression analysis can be used to construct this model. The trip-generation model is an important tool for transportation systems planning. Regression methods are among the most widely used statistical techniques in engineering. They are presented in Chapters 11 and 12.

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