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Probability and/or Statistics Guidelines for Incoming Students
As you know, the Systems Engineering Program requires an undergraduate level Probability and Statistics prerequisite
for students enrolling in the MEng program. We have identified the material that is a necessary prerequisite for our
classes. This information is a guideline for the probability and statistics concepts that we feel every student should
understand in order to be successful in our courses.
The key question in determining the suitability of your knowledge from having taken or planning to take a particular
course is partially summed by the following quote from a report from the American Statistical Association (Guidelines
for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE)):
“Some people teach courses that are heavily slanted toward teaching students to become statistically literate
and wise consumers of data; this is somewhat similar to an art appreciation course. Some teach courses more
heavily slanted toward teaching students to become producers of statistical analyses; this is analogous to the
studio art course.”
What you will need for Cornell Master of Engineering classes is the latter, analogous to the studio course.
Some classes offered at Cornell that we consider to offer the appropriate preparation are ENGRD2700 and CEE3040. For
your reference, the items covered in ENGRD2700 are listed below. We also feel that the textbook: Devore, J.,
Probability and Statistics for Engineering and the Sciences (any edition) is at the level that is needed for our classes. Thus
if you are getting ready to take our classes you might want to review that book to be sure that you feel comfortable with
material at the appropriate level.
If you are interested in taking a suitable distance learning course, there are a number of these available from various
universities, however, you should have the course approved in advance of completing it to be sure it will be approved.
One DL course that we are familiar with and has proved satisfactory in the past is Math217 from Indiana University of
Pennsylvania.
Cornell University ENGRD 2700 Basic Probability and Statistics for Engineers
Contents
1
Introduction and Motivation
Intro, What the course is about, Overview
2 Exploratory Data Analysis: Describing Sample Data
Graphical displays
Numerical summaries
3 Counting and Probability
Counting: Product rule, sampling with replacement, without, combs, practice
problems
Cornell EngineeringSystems EngineeringCounting: Product rule, sampling with replacement, without, combs, practice problems, Probability: Elements, Events, Probability functions, specifying, properties, equal probs, hypergeometric
