Buy a book... 
| Degrees of Belief. Subjective Probability and Engineering Judgement | Buy a book...
|
| Author(s): | S. Vick |
| Publisher: | ASCE |
| ISBN: | 0784405980 |
| Format: | softback |
| 455pp | |
| Price: | $59.00 |
| Review Date: | 19 March 2003 |
| Review: | This book looks at engineering judgement, what it is and what role it has to play. The author explores beyond the field of engineering to re-establish the role of judgement, looks at the reasoning processes that engineers use, and examines the workings of ‘expertise’. He examines how and when to use probability, make risk-based assessments, evaluate them, and decide what they mean. Written from a geological and earth science perspective, the book looks at three core elements: uncertainties in knowledge, inductive reasoning, and individual expertise. It shows the distance between theory and practice and how this is manifested in the different meanings of probability used in reliability and risk assessment. It also looks at the nature of expertise with figures such as Roebling, Stevens and Terzaghi. |