Engineers and managers often must make important decisions in situations in which there is substantial uncertainty because of limited data. In some of those cases, the data analyses can be bolstered by incorporating engineering knowledge and experience. The following is a simple method for doing this. A more formal statistical approach involving Bayesian methods will be covered in a future Statistics Roundtable column. To illustrate the data analyses, consider an example dealing with aircraft engine bearing cage failures, first offered in the Weibull Analysis Handbook12 (see the sidebar "The Importance of Design for Reliability" for current thinking on averting such problems).
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