Fixed Effects Regression Methods for Longitudinal Data Using SAS®

nondeterministic methods are probabilistic methods “that replace traditional deterministic approaches for making design decisions with a new risk-based approach that uses rigorous models to quantify uncertainty and assess safety” (Preface, p. ix). Applications in Part 3 of the handbook are limited to the first three industries listed above. Participants as authors include engineers and scientists, as well as statisticians, from industry and from government agencies such as NASA, plus the usual coterie of academic participants. Altogether 76 authors and co-authors have assembled 45 different chapters. The first seven chapters constitute Part 1, “Status and Future of Nondeterministic Approaches” (NDA’s). These chapters focus on methods for product design and the research that supports the creation and development of new reliability methodologies. The next 20 chapters have been gathered under the heading for Part 2, “Nondeterministic Modeling: Critical Issues and Recent Advances.” Some of the statistical topics that can be found here are uncertainty, information theory, evidence theory, interval methods, expert knowledge, reliability models, system reliability, probability models, response surfaces, Bayesian modeling and updating, accelerated life testing, and variance-reduction techniques, where the foregoing laundry list follows the order of the chapters. The mathematical level of a number of these chapters is at or above the content of Meeker and Escobar (1998), the most comprehensive statistical reliability textbook. This is certainly not the technical level of a book for reliability engineers, such as O’Connor (2002). I did not expect to find a lot of interesting chapters among the applications in Part III, since BP does not design and deliver products in very many of its businesses. There are a number of chapters that relate to design in aerospace or machinery. There are also chapters on reliability assessment, such as corrosionfatigue damage, a common problem in refineries, and analysis for composite structures, which are everywhere in oil and gas production. There is a chapter on reliability assessment for ships, a big issue for a company like BP that owns a fleet of ships that transport liquefied natural gas. There is another chapter on reliability assessment and maintenance for large pipelines. BP owns a few thousand miles of those, whose reliability is critical to the operation of the entire business. Some of these chapters have some mathematical content, but generally they are more typical of the engineering reliability textbook genre. This is probably not a book that should be on every reliability engineer’s desktop. Too many papers have a research orientation to their content. However, any organization in industry, government, or academia that has an interest in reliability technology should make sure to acquire copies for their associated libraries. Every scientist or engineer with an interest in reliability should be able to find something of interest in this handbook.