<p>I’m just wondering how these topics are incorporated into structural engineering and geotechnical engineering. Can someone in field tell me how they are used and why are they required to be studied in school?</p>
<p>I didn’t have to take any of those classes when I studied structural engineering, but I am old! I always wished I’d taken statistics, because it would help when reading some journal articles. It would have helped me with my master’s thesis, too! I had a lot of data to organize, and I would have done a better job with a knowledge of statistics.</p>
<p>Mainelonghorn- Could you give me some examples of where you thought statistics would have helped you on the job?</p>
<p>To understand the research described in articles such as the one below (I don’t know anything about it, I just did a random Google search):</p>
<p>"Fragility Analysis and Seismic Record Selection</p>
<p>J. Structural Eng. 137, 379 (2011)</p>
<p>This paper explores the influence of spectrum-matched and amplitude-scaled ground motions on the development of fragility functions for structures. The quantification of the influence of these two types of ensembles on ground motions in predicting demands of structural and nonstructural systems is addressed. Moreover, the paper investigates the sensitivity of number of accelerograms in the ensembles, which produces consistent results in the nonlinear analyses. A multidegree-of-freedom (MDOF) inelastic shear-type building is used in the evaluations. The median and the dispersion of different types of damage measures are evaluated at each story and the effect of different levels of nonlinearity is investigated. Fragility functions are developed for structural and nonstructural components using the maximum likelihood method from the response generated with the selected ground motions. The sufficient number of ground motions necessary in the estimation of the response parameters and on the evaluation of the fragility functions is presented herein"</p>
<p>If I’m going to use the conclusions of an author in designing a building, I would like to make sure I agree with his/her methodology. Knowing statistics would help with that understanding.</p>
<p>LOL, who was it who said structural engineering is easy? :)</p>
<p>I just got done with intro to stats. Although I understand most of the terms used, I don’t really understand how they all fit together. Its kind of like reading a paragraph in french after taking one semester of it. The meaning of some of the words pops out at you, but you wouldn’t be able to comprehend the meaning of the whole paragraph very well.</p>
<p>The entire field of random vibration and processes is based on probability and statistics.</p>
<p>From [PROBABILISTIC</a> ENGINEERING DESIGN](<a href=“http://asq.org/reliability/probabilistic-engineering-design.doc][i]PROBABILISTIC”>http://asq.org/reliability/probabilistic-engineering-design.doc):</p>
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<p>LRFD design is based on structural reliability and statistics.</p>