1st Edition

Probability Foundations for Engineers

By Joel A. Nachlas Copyright 2012

    Suitable for a first course in probability theory and designed specifically for industrial engineering and operations management students, Probability Foundations for Engineers covers theory in an accessible manner and includes numerous practical examples based on engineering applications. Essentially, everyone understands and deals with probabilit

    Historical Perspectives. A Brief Review of Set Theory. Probability Basics. Random Variables and Distributions. Joint, Marginal, and Conditional Distributions. Expectation and Functions of Random Variables. Moment-Generating Functions. Approximations and Limiting Behavior. Appendix: Cumulative Poisson Probabilities. Index.

    Biography

    Joel A. Nachlas serves on the faculty of the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech.   He has taught at Virginia Tech since 1974 and acts as the coordinator for the department's graduate program in Operations Research.  For the past twelve years, he has also taught Reliability Theory regularly at the Ecole Superiore d'Ingenieures de Nice-Sophia Antipolis. 


    Dr. Nachlas received his B. E. S. from the Johns Hopkins University in 1970, his M. S. in 1972 and his Ph. D. in 1976 both from the University of Pittsburgh.  His research interests are in the applications of probability and statistics to problems in reliability and quality control.  His work in microelectronics reliability has been performed in collaboration with and under the support of the IBM Corp., INTELSAT and the Bull Corp.  He is the co-author of over fifty refereed articles, has served in numerous editorial and referee capacities and has lectured on reliability and maintenance topics throughout North America and Europe.