Preface to the Third Edition Revised

This revised edition has been produced in response to numerous suggestions that the book would be of greater value to students and teachers if it included exercise questions. David Newton and Richard Bromley have therefore teamed up with me to produce exercises appropriate to each chapter of the book.

The exercises cover nearly all of the types of questions that occur in the reliability examinations set by the UK Institute of Quality Assurance (IQA) and by the American Society for Quality Control (ASQC). The ASQC examination questions are of the multiple-choice type, which is not the format used here, but this should make no difference to the value of the exercises in preparing for the ASQC examination.

A solutions manual is available to teachers, free of charge, by writing to John Wiley and Sons Ltd in Chichester.

I would like to thank David Newton and Richard Bromley for their enthusiastic support in preparing this revised edition.

PATRICK O'CONNOR

1995