CEE 592

Statistical Fundamentals for Construction and Materials Applications

Course Introduction

Welcome

Readings

The text and lesson notes are all contained in one document—Statistical Fundamentals for Construction and Materials Applications. This online document contains all lesson readings and associated examples. Most of the examples apply to construction materials and pavement applications.

Other Materials

No specific computer software is required for this course—just a calculator will do. The goal is to learn about fundamental statistical methods—not a specific software application.

CEE 592 Statistical Fundamentals for Construction and Materials Applications is a required course for the Certificate Program in Quantitative Construction Management and for the distance learning Master of Science in Construction Management or Master of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering program. You will have five weeks in which to complete all course requirements.

Course Description

This course is designed to overview basic statistical measures used in various construction and materials decision-making. Subjects will include an introduction to data distributions, hypothesis tests (making decisions with statistics), regression analysis, sampling, and quality control and assurance.

Instructor

Joe P. Mahoney (jmahoney@u.washington.edu)

Communication

Communication with the instructor concerning Assignments, the Discussion Forum, and related questions must be submitted via the discussion forum. This maximizes the interaction with other students and avoids use of instructor e-mail. Daily, the instructor gets a large amount of e-mail; hence, submittals and discussion via that process is at risk of being delayed or lost.

Course Objectives

In general, this course is designed to give students (1) an introduction to statistics, (2) illustrate statistical concepts by use of construction or materials related examples, and (3) provide a sense of the variability associated with contemporary construction materials.

After completing this course, the student will be able to:

Describe basic measures of central tendency;
Describe distributions such as cumulative frequency plots, histograms, and data distributions;
Perform tests of hypotheses;
Perform basic regression analysis and understand the significance of the coefficient of determination and mean square error;
Understand the need for random sampling;
Calculate the needed sample size for a random sample; and
Understand the calculation and use of quality control charts and their relationship to construction specifications.

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course other than basic Distance Learning entrance requirements. This course was designed with the assumption that the student has no significant knowledge of statistics. If you have had a prior statistics course or experience using statistical applications, then the course content will likely be even more straightforward.

Course Content (Lessons, Duration, Reading)

Lessons

The course is organized into six online lessons to be completed in the five weeks allocated. The time allocated for each lesson is typically Monday through Sunday. The six lessons are:

Lessons One and Two: Course Introduction, Measures of Central Tendency, and Distributions. An introduction to the course, measures of central tendency such as mean, median, mode, frequency plots, and data distributions (1 week)
Lesson Three, Parts A and B: Tests of Hypotheses. Test of hypotheses, including associated risks. (1 week)
Lesson Four, Parts A and B: Regression Analysis. An introduction to correlation, linear regression with one independent variable, and transformations. (1 week)
Lesson Five: Sampling. Use of and need for sampling with specific emphasis on random sampling. (1 week)
Lesson Six, Parts A and B: Statistical Methods for Construction Quality Control and Specifications. Methods of quality control, quality assurance, and related statistical methods. (1 week)

There are seven lessons contained in the online notes. The last lesson (Lesson Seven—Experimental Design) will not be covered in this course. It is included in the notes so that the student can do a bit of self-study on that topic if they are so inclined.

Reading

The lesson reading assignments provide a discussion of each lesson's major points. After completing the lesson, you should answer the discussion forum questions.

Discussion Forum

An online discussion forum will be conducted each week to discuss questions posed in the assignment for each lesson, and to address any of your questions. Each of you is expected to provide a written response, or posting, to each of the questions posed in the assignment by 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time each Friday. It is assumed many of you will use the weekend to prepare your assignments. The reason for requiring participation in the discussion forum during the week is to provide a bit of motivation to review the online lesson content before the weekend, interact with the rest of the class, and ask any questions while your instructor is available. The instructor may not be available during the weekend.

Assignments

Each lesson includes a related assignment. The answers to some assignment questions may not be found in the specific reading material for the individual lesson. You may have to use other available resources. Assignments are due by 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time on the designated Monday mornings.

Examinations

There are no examinations.

Grading

The following elements will make up your final course grade:

Completed assignments	75%
Discussion Forum	25%
TOTAL	100%