MECH&AE 174
Probability and Its Applications to Risk, Reliability, and Quality Control
Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, two hours; outside study, six hours. Requisite: Mathematics 33A. Introduction to probability theory; random variables, distributions, functions of random variables, models of failure of components, reliability, redundancy, complex systems, stress-strength models, fault tree analysis, statistical quality control by variables and by attributes, acceptance sampling. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2024 - The class consists of 6 HW's, a midterm and a final. The HW's sum up to 10% and the midterm/final are each 50%. I agree with the other review that the class is very straightforward. The HW's can be a little challenging but you can typically finish them after going over his slides or getting a bit of advice during OH or from the TA. But they're nothing crazy if you take notes and study the slides. The midterm and final consist of roughly 5-8 problems and of those problems, 4-6 are basically from the HW / lecture slides. But the last couple are often new and made to be tricky. A good bonus is that he gives sample midterms and finals, but I wouldn't rely on those to get a feel for the actual midterm/final as it won't be of the same rigor. Overall though, I would recommend this class to anyone either interested in the field of System Reliability or simply looking to take a somewhat easy MAE elective.
Fall 2024 - The class consists of 6 HW's, a midterm and a final. The HW's sum up to 10% and the midterm/final are each 50%. I agree with the other review that the class is very straightforward. The HW's can be a little challenging but you can typically finish them after going over his slides or getting a bit of advice during OH or from the TA. But they're nothing crazy if you take notes and study the slides. The midterm and final consist of roughly 5-8 problems and of those problems, 4-6 are basically from the HW / lecture slides. But the last couple are often new and made to be tricky. A good bonus is that he gives sample midterms and finals, but I wouldn't rely on those to get a feel for the actual midterm/final as it won't be of the same rigor. Overall though, I would recommend this class to anyone either interested in the field of System Reliability or simply looking to take a somewhat easy MAE elective.
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Most Helpful Review
Swider is a good communicator but a bad teacher. For a class that has homeworks and exams based entirely on solving math problems, he never does a single example in class. His lecture slides are highly convoluted with complex math that 1. he never explains and always skims over, 2. are so detailed in their derivations we dont even use them in the homeworks or exams. He provides a good high level background of reliability engineering and why it is important, but none of this knowledge is applied in the homework or exams you will do for the class. Basically, the lectures are entirely useless if you don't care about the field (which was the case for me, because I was a CS major). The class would be easy but because the professor never explained the problems, you are left to figure it out on your own and try to decipher his convoluted slides. We didn't have a TA until about two weeks into the class. He was helpful because he was able to help us with the homework problems, but half the time pretended to know the topics better than he actually did.
Swider is a good communicator but a bad teacher. For a class that has homeworks and exams based entirely on solving math problems, he never does a single example in class. His lecture slides are highly convoluted with complex math that 1. he never explains and always skims over, 2. are so detailed in their derivations we dont even use them in the homeworks or exams. He provides a good high level background of reliability engineering and why it is important, but none of this knowledge is applied in the homework or exams you will do for the class. Basically, the lectures are entirely useless if you don't care about the field (which was the case for me, because I was a CS major). The class would be easy but because the professor never explained the problems, you are left to figure it out on your own and try to decipher his convoluted slides. We didn't have a TA until about two weeks into the class. He was helpful because he was able to help us with the homework problems, but half the time pretended to know the topics better than he actually did.
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