Reliability and Statistics in Geotechnical Engineering

Several of the logic structures and formats used leave much to be desired. Part I leaves the reader with only the barest explanation of which methods apply to which problems. There are rather large leaps in mathematical symbolism that spans algebra, integral calculus, matrices, sets, and directed graphs. Questions regarding the details of computation, code, algorithms, mathematics, and statistics are directed to references. This tactic would be appealing had the citations referred to specific chapters and pages. Another frequent irritation is that much terminology is introduced without definition and many terms are not explained until subsequent chapters. References to case studies in the methods section are few, and the case studies themselves do not obviously point back to the methods section that they support. Consequently, it is easy to get lost in tangential concepts, which could have been avoided with a more sequential presentation. In Part II, each case is presented according to the following outline: Objectives, description of the data, EDA, model building, model comparison, and summary report. Only the models change between cases. The individual cases are well organized, and the structure of the presentation will appeal to any scientifically inclined reader. My only serious criticism of Part II is that the defense of the “best” method chosen often seems highly subjective, especially when computational methods are being evaluated. Although the author has achieved the purposes he sets out in Chapter 1, I can recommend this book only to experienced statisticians and analysts who either have access to SAS EM or are trying to justify its purchase to their management. It might also be of value to users trying to assemble a set of DM procedures, because SAS has clearly defined the state of the art in DM packages. Those interested in the do-it-yourself SAS approach may wish to consult the texts by Fernandez (2003) and Rud (2001), reported in Technometrics by Caby (2004) and Ziegel (2002).