Dakota Moore

9/1/16
HW 1
Pg. 4 – 1; Pg. 13 – 1,2,4; Pg. 19 – 1; Pg. 24 -8

P.4-1) Q: Explain why engineering practice is an inherently statistical enterprise.

A: Engineering in itself is the process of designing, building and implementing, all of
which requires a plethora of data. This means that all that data leads to a number of statistical
analysis and measurements.

P.13-1) Q: Describe a situation in your field where an observational study might be used to
answer a question of real importance. Describe another situation where an experiment might be
used.
A: A pretty general situation in the field of Software Engineering is using an
observational study to study the usage of a software to determine its strengths and weaknesses.
This would be done without changing anything so that you can have a full understanding of
what’s all wrong/right. An experiment would be used when developing said software, where you
would change something in a program to see how it changes certain aspects of it.

P.13-2) Q: Describe two different contexts in your field where, respectively, qualitative and
quantitative data might arise.
A: Qualitative data would be pulled from debugging a program where either an answer
would be “It worked” or “It didn’t work”, while quantitative data would arise from something
like how many people use each type of operating systems or how long it takes a program to run.

P.13-4) Q: Describe a situation in your field where paired data might arise.
A:

P.19-1) Q: Why might it be argued that in terms of producing useful measurements, one must
deal first with the issue of validity, then the issue of precision, and only then the issue of
accuracy?
A: The most popular in my field would be a before-after test when altering a program,
and it could measure correctness, time it takes to run, etc.

P24-8) Q: Consider a situation like that of Example 1 (involving the heat treating of gears).
Suppose that the original hears can be purchased from a variety of vendors, they can be made out
of a variety of materials, they can be heated according to a variety of regimens (involving
different times and temperatures), they can be cooled in a number of different ways, and the
furnace atmosphere can be adjusted to a variety of different conditions. A number of features of
the final gears are of interest, including their flatness, their concentricity, their hardness (both
before and after treating), and their surface finish.

(a) What kind of data arise if, for a single set of conditions, the Rockwell hardness of
several gears is measured before and after heat treating? (Use terminology of Section
1.2.) In the same context, suppose that engineering specifications on flatness require
that measured flatness not exceed .40mm. If flatness is measured for several gears
 and each gear is simply marked Acceptable or Not Acceptable, what kind of data are
generated?
A(a): When taking data of before/after heat treatment, this would be paired data. If it’s
Acceptable or Not Acceptable, then it is Qualitative Data.

(b) Describe a three-factor full factorial study that might be carried out in this situation.
Name the factors that will be used and describe the levels of each. Write out a list of
all the different combinations of levels of the factors that will be studied.
A(b): The factors and levels would be (assuming we’re making the study based off (a)):
 Gear (Said several gears, assuming 3)
o G1
o G2
o G3
 Hardness
o Before heat treatment
o After heat treatment
 Flatness
o Acceptable
o Not Acceptable
 Possibilities:
o G1, BHT, A
o G1, AHT, A
o G1, BHT, NA
o G1, AHT, NA
o G2, BHT, A
o G2, AHT, A
o G2, BHT, NA
o G2, AHT, NA
o G3, BHT, A
o G3, AHT, A
o G3, BHT, NA
o G3, AHT, NA