Continuous Distributions in Engineering and the Applied Sciences: Part I

This is an introductory book on continuous statistical distributions and its applications. It is primarily written for graduate students in engineering, undergraduate students in statistics, econometrics, and researchers in various fields. The purpose is to give a self-contained introduction to most commonly used classical continuous distributions in two parts. Important applications of each distribution in various applied fields are explored at the end of each chapter. A brief overview of the chapters is as follows.

Chapter 1 discusses important concepts on continuous distributions like location-and-scale distributions, truncated, size-biased, and transmuted distributions. A theorem on finding the mean deviation of continuous distributions, and its applications are also discussed. Chapter 2 is on continuous uniform distribution, which is used in generating random numbers from other distributions. Exponential distribution is discussed in Chapter 3, and its applications briefly mentioned. Chapter 4 discusses both Beta-I and Beta-II distributions and their generalizations, as well as applications in geotechnical engineering, PERT, control charts, etc. The arcsine distribution and its variants are discussed in Chapter 5, along with arcsine transforms and Brownian motion. This is followed by gamma distribution and its applications in civil engineering, metallurgy, and reliability. Chapter 7 is on cosine distribution and its applications in signal processing, antenna design, and robotics path planning. Chapter 8 discusses the normal distribution and its variants like lognormal, and skew-normal distributions. The last chapter of Part I is on Cauchy distribution, its variants and applications in thermodynamics, interferometer design, and carbon-nanotube strain sensing. A new volume (Part II) covers inverse Gaussian, Laplace, Pareto,