22.38 -- Probability and Its Applications to Reliability, Quality Control, and Risk Assessment
Course Description: Interpretations of the concept of probability. Basic probability rules; random variables and distribution functions; functions of random variables. Applications to quality control and the reliability assessment of mechanical/electrical components, as well as simple structures and redundant systems. Elements of statistics. Bayesian methods in engineering. Methods for reliability and risk assessment of complex systems, (event-tree and fault-tree analysis, common-cause failures, human reliability models). Uncertainty propagation in complex systems (Monte Carlo methods, Latin hypercube sampling). Introduction to Markov models. Examples and applications from nuclear and other industries, waste repositories, and mechanical systems. Open to qualified undergraduates.

This class is at the Graduate level
Instructor: M. W. Golay
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor

Insider's Wisdom

This course has more probability content than statistics, but it does introduce the Central Limit Theorem, hypothesis testing, the T distribution etc. The goal of the class is to introduce a way of thinking about novel risk questions and how they can be treated. This course often has students outside of the Nuclear Science and Engineering.

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