Basic Probability, Statistics, and Reliability

Abstract

This chapter presents some fundamental elements of probability and statistics with which some readers are probably already familiar, but others may be not. Statistics is the study of how best one can describe and analyze the data and then draw conclusions or inferences based on the data available. The analysis of the reliability of a system must be based on precisely defined concepts. Since it is readily accepted that a population of supposedly identical systems, operating under similar conditions, fall at different points in time, then a failure phenomenon can only be described in probabilistic terms. Thus, the fundamental definitions of reliability must depend on the concepts from probability theory.