This book is intended for students and practitioners who have had a calculus-based statistics course and who have an interest in safety considerations such as reliability, strength, and duration-of-load or service life. Many persons studying statistical science will be employed professionally where the problems encountered are obscure, what should be analyzed is not clear, the appropriate assumptions are equivocal, and data are scant. In this book there is no disclosure with many of the data sets what type of investigation should be made or what assumptions are to be used.
From the reviews:
"The book authored by one of the most distinguished scientists in the area of reliability theory ... . It is a highly recommendable state-of-the-art description of the field. ... Essentially the book is a collection of chapters summarizing the state of the art in reliability. ... The book is an excellent introduction into the reliability theory. ... I recommend this book strongly ... ." (Goetz Uebe, Advances in Statistical Analysis, Vol. 91 (4), 2007)
"This text is aimed at graduate scientists and engineers and intends to provide a theoretical underpinning to modelling reliability and the analysis of life data. ... the majority of the book concerns the mathematical development of the area that requires a background in probability and mathematical statistics including measures." (Peter Watts Jones, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1120 (22), 2007)
"This book addresses ‘theoretical’, meaning mathematical and statistical, aspects of reliability and failure time analysis. The presentation is ... idiosyncratic in its topic selection and ordering of material. ... It does, however, offer valuable insights and ... thought-provoking material. ... The book also has a great many quotes from notables ... . These are entertaining and educational ... . Overall, I enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone interested in statistics for reliability and, more broadly, engineering science." (Jerry F. Lawless, International Statistical Review, Vol. 75 (2), 2007)
"This book reviews in an elegant and practical framework some of the main mathematical concepts and results of the modern theory of reliability. The author takes care to explain the intuitive value of and to comment on the practical importance of the mathematical models. It seems ... to offer available mathematical information in order to teach the reader to be competent to make valid service-life predictions. ... The reading of the book is pleasant. The author evidences considerable erudition and great experience in the field." (Eugen Paltanea, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2008 h)
"This book gives detailed and technical presentations of a broad array of reliability models and methods. ... the book is likely better suited as a reference book or graduate-level textbook. ... Overall, this book is a valuable collection of mathematical and probability methods for studying a variety of reliability and service-life models. With it, the reader will be able to build a solid foundation for the theoretical aspects of this interesting and increasingly important topic." (Christine M. Anderson-Cook, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 103 (482), June, 2008)
“The book is intended for engineers and scientists, and the author provides a review section on the essentials of probability and statistics to facilitate their reading. ... this is a nice book. It engages the reader, has a reasonably good coverage of the standard material in reliability, and is a valuable source of reference for mathematical technologies relevant to reliability. ... it will remain handy on my bookshelf for amusement, inspiration, and enlightenment.” (Nozer D. Singpurwalla, SIAM Review, Vol. 52 (1), 2010)
