Empirical Modeling And Data Analysis For Engineers And Applied Scientists

Empirical Modeling and Data Analysis for Engineers and Applied Scientists

This textbook teaches advanced undergraduate and first-year graduate students in Engineering and Applied Sciences to gather and analyze empirical observations (data) in order to aid in making design decisions. While science is about discovery, the primary paradigm of engineering and "applied science" is design. Scientists are in the discovery business and want, in general, to understand the natural world rather than to alter it. In contrast, engineers and applied scientists design products, processes, and solutions to problems. That said, statistics, as a discipline, is mostly oriented toward the discovery paradigm. Young engineers come out of their degree programs having taken courses such as "Statistics for Engineers and Scientists" without any clear idea as to how they can use statistical methods to help them design products or processes. Many seem to think that statistics is only useful for demonstrating that a device or process actually does what it was designed to do. Statistics courses emphasize creating predictive or classification models - predicting nature or classifying individuals, and statistics is often used to prove or disprove phenomena as opposed to aiding in the design of a product or process. In industry however, Chemical Engineers use designed experiments to optimize petroleum extraction; Manufacturing Engineers use experimental data to optimize machine operation; Industrial Engineers might use data to determine the optimal number of operators required in a manual assembly process. This text teaches engineering and applied science students to incorporate empirical investigation into such design processes. Much of the discussion in this book is about models, not whether the models truly represent reality but whether they adequately represent reality with respect to the problems at hand; many ideas focus on how to gather data in the most efficient way possible to construct adequate models. Includes chapters on subjects not often seen together in a single text (e.g., measurement systems, mixture experiments, logistic regression, Taguchi methods, simulation) Techniques and concepts introduced present a wide variety of design situations familiar to engineers and applied scientists and inspire incorporation of experimentation and empirical investigation into the design process. Software is integrally linked to statistical analyses with fully worked examples in each chapter; fully worked using several packages: SAS, R, JMP, Minitab, and MS Excel - also including discussion questions at the end of each chapter. The fundamental learning objective of this textbook is for the reader to understand how experimental data can be used to make design decisions and to be familiar with the most common types of experimental designs and analysis methods.

Empirical Modeling and Data Analysis for Engineers and Applied Scientists

Applied Data Analysis and Modeling for Energy Engineers and Scientists

Now in a thoroughly revised and expanded second edition, this classroom-tested text demonstrates and illustrates how to apply concepts and methods learned in disparate courses such as mathematical modeling, probability, statistics, experimental design, regression, optimization, parameter estimation, inverse modeling, risk analysis, decision-making, and sustainability assessment methods to energy processes and systems. It provides a formal structure that offers a broad and integrative perspective to enhance knowledge, skills, and confidence to work in applied data analysis and modeling problems. This new edition also reflects recent trends and advances in statistical modeling as applied to energy and building processes and systems. It includes numerous examples from recently published technical papers to nurture and stimulate a more research-focused mindset. How the traditional stochastic data modeling methods complement data analytic algorithmic approaches such as machine learning and data mining is also discussed. The important societal issue related to the sustainability of energy systems is presented, and a formal structure is proposed meant to classify the various assessment methods found in the literature. Applied Data Analysis and Modeling for Energy Engineers and Scientists is designed for senior-level undergraduate and graduate instruction in energy engineering and mathematical modeling, for continuing education professional courses, and as a self-study reference book for working professionals. In order for readers to have exposure and proficiency with performing hands-on analysis, the open-source Python and R programming languages have been adopted in the form of Jupyter notebooks and R markdown files, and numerous data sets and sample computer code reflective of real-world problems are available online.