Lecture 23/24 - Intro to Decision Making

Question 1

What is aleatory uncertainty?

Answer 1

Natural randomness (rain, river flows, wind, earthquakes etc)

Question 2

What is epistemic uncertainty?

Answer 2

Inaccuracy in our understanding and our models for predicting reality.

Question 3

What are the three options for making decisions based on incomplete knowledge and information?

Answer 3

• ignore uncertainties
• use intuition for uncertainties
• scientific approach, probability, interval estimation

Question 4

How engineers evaluate their situations?

Answer 4

• has a change in the design approach or procurement process left to a decrease or increase in failures
• has changing the process for producing a material resulted in a better or worse material.