Our intention in preparing this book was to present in as simple a manner as possible those branches of error analysis which ?nd direct applications in solving various problems in engineering practice. The main reason for writing this text was the lack of such an approach in existing books dealing with the error calculus. Most of books are devoted to mathematical statistics and to probability theory. The range of applications is usually limited to the problems of general statistics and to the analysis of errors in various measuring techniques. Much less attention is paid in these books to two-dimensional and three-dim- sional distributions, and almost no attention is given to problems connected with the two-dimensional and three-dimensional vectorial functions of independent random variables. The theory of such vectorial functions ?nds new applications connected, for example, with analysis of the positioning accuracy of various mechanisms, among them of robot manipulators and automatically controlled earth-moving and loading machines, such as excavators.

Our intention in preparing this book was to present in as simple a manner as possible those branches of error analysis which ?nd direct applications in solving various problems in engineering practice. The main reason for writing this text was the lack of such an approach in existing books dealing with the error calculus. Most of books are devoted to mathematical statistics and to probability theory. The range of applications is usually limited to the problems of general statistics and to the analysis of errors in various measuring techniques. Much less attention is paid in these books to two-dimensional and three-dim- sional distributions, and almost no attention is given to problems connected with the two-dimensional and three-dimensional vectorial functions of independent random variables. The theory of such vectorial functions ?nds new applications connected, for example, with analysis of the positioning accuracy of various mechanisms, among them of robot manipulators and automatically controlled earth-moving and loading machines, such as excavators.