An old Nomograph that can save Risk Analysts and Reliability Engineers a lot of time: “Cumulative Sums of the Poisson” – affectionately called the “Thorndike Chart”
If you ever had to explain to a customer that the expected number of “catastrophic” events over the next (say) 10 years is a small fraction < 1. ..(say 0.26 events)..
Using the Thorndike chart you can see that using µ=0.26, the Probability of seeing 1 (or more) events over the same time period is 0.24.
Much easier to explain to a customer than 0.26 “expected” events!!
Previously published in the June 2013 Volume 4, Issue 2 ASQ Reliability Division Newsletter
