Probability Concepts in Engineering Planning and Design, Basic Principles

A great collection of both fundamental and advanced probability concepts as applied to civil engineering design situations. This textbook was extremely useful during my undergraduate and graduate courses in probability as well as in more specialized courses in wind and seismic engineering. More importantly, I still find myself using this text now that I am out of college. Wounderfully written textbook on a classic topic in engineering that will withstand the changes in technology and still prevail as some of the most important fundamentals in design methodology.

An indispensable reference book, it provides a great balance of theory, worked examples, and exercises that thoroughly explain basic concepts of probability and risk as encountered in Civil and Environmental Engineering. The first edition has been within arm's reach on my book shelf for 30 years. I wish all my engineering texts were so well written.

I have used this book and Vol 2 in my graduate and undergraduate courses. Having used a variety of texts for teaching and learning about probability and statistics in an engineering context, I would say the two volumes by Ang and Tang have no rivals. Lots and lots of good engineering type problems.

We used this text as the first half of a graduate course in engineering reliability. It presented the concepts clearly and in terms of engineering problems rather than card picking and coin flipping like many other probability and statistics texts. It also provided a thorough treatment of the mathematical basis of the sciences of probability and statistics. The second volume is also an excellent text, though I have had trouble locating it recently. It treats the issues of reliability and decision analysis in more detail.