Reddit mentions: The best industrial quality control books

As you probably already know, strain gauges change their resistance as they are strained / deformed. They are merely a metallic wire wrapped back and forth. When bent inward or compressed, the wire thickens and the resistance decreases. When bent outward or in tension, the wire thins and resistance increases.

http://i.imgur.com/RNEfY22.png
Image Source

That's fantastic, except, resistance is not very nice to measure over time. Sure you can measure it with a multimeter, but plunking that into a computer that can capture data over time isn't as clean.

Voltage, however, is very easy to measure over time. To do that, they use something called a wheatstone bridge. A simple diamond of resistors that allows one to detect a small chain in resistance as a voltage.
http://i.imgur.com/i7R0OFp.png Image Source

Where in place of some of the resistors, you instead place your strain gauge. A variable resistor.

Gauges can be mounted in any number of configurations. Here are a few common ones.
http://i.imgur.com/HzbuTuF.png Image Source

Depending on how they are mounted they allow one to compensate for other variability that may be recorded by the strain gauge that isn't what you wish to measure.

Great! Now let's take configuration 1 and do some maths.

A single strain gauge, on a beam in uniaxial stress.

You can derive the wheatstone bridge equations if you wish, but what it comes down to is:
http://i.imgur.com/YhtKo8w.png Image Source

Let's put one strain gauge on leg X. (Effectively leg 4) Replace X with R + delta R because it is in tension. Let's also assume the resistance of the other legs of the bridge is the same as the nominal resistance of the gauge. (A fair assumption, as you'd likely do that if you made your own bridge.)
http://i.imgur.com/6iwkETC.png Image Source

Delta R is a function of strain.
http://i.imgur.com/lFQqKIJ.png Image Source

For these types of strain gauges, GF, gauge factor, is 2. (approximately)

Let's solve that equation for delta R and plug it back into our voltage eqn.
http://i.imgur.com/NpTt8ki.png Image Source

Really simplifies down. Cool.

Except you rarely get off that easily; you also rarely use only 1 strain gauge. Let's try a half bridge, 2 strain gauges, then do a full bridge, all 4 legs are gauges.

Back to that table, we can try the second one. Two strain gauges in bending, one measuring compression, the other tension. Placed on the left side legs of the bridge.

Back to the wheatstone formula, except this time leg 1 is R + delta R because it is in tension and leg 3 is R - delta R because it is in compression.
http://i.imgur.com/Rarqwel.png Image Source

Lastly, let's step up to the full bridge. Instead of configuration 4, where it is just a beam in tension, let's bend it instead. Where all legs are strain gauges, let's throw 1 and 4 on the bottom so they are in compression R = R - dR, and 2 and 3 on top so they are in tension, R = R + dR.

http://i.imgur.com/SDLwxdb.png Image Source

If we did something like configuration 4 in the table, we'd record close to nothing in bending. As it states in the compensation provided - effects from bending are eliminated from the calculations.

Let me know if you'd like to see more examples. Also double check my calculations, I just did those up quickly in mathcad to show.

I just finished a class with Luis Escobar, probably one of the top three survival and reliability experts. You want his book, it's super clear and focuses heavily on censoring.

http://www.amazon.com/Statistical-Methods-Reliability-Probability-Statistics/dp/0471143286/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323974557&sr=8-1

We used JMP (by SAS) software to follow along the book. The JMP team actually developed the reliability and survival analysis machinery by following my profs book. Once you install JMP there's 'sample data' under the 'help' pull down menu and you'll see a bunch of actual data from the Meeker and Escobar book.

JMP actually saves the steps taken for these sample data, which include censored obs. analysis, in script files, and you can run these script files.

Dealing with left censoring and right censoring is pretty easy with JMP using a likelihood estimation (or some specified loss function). JMP also has the ability to model multiple failure modes.

The ultimate authority for GD&T is ASME Y14.5, so you should at least have it on hand for reference, but there are plenty of books / pocket guides on the topic that are easier to understand.

Pocket Guide to Geometrics

Design Dimensioning and Tolerancing

edit: Also Y14.100 for general drawing format & practices.

Bendat & Piersol's Random Data: Analysis and Measurement Procedures 4th Edition is a great place to start for signal processing and has a chapter on non-stationary analysis. This is the go-to signal processing book for many in the acoustics and structural dynamics communities.

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I've only gotten tangential exposure to wavelet transforms. I'm sorry I can't help with that.

Find out the textbooks that are used for the major stat classes. This is the book used for Regression Methods:

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Regression-Analysis-Douglas-Montgomery/dp/0470542810/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506402483&sr=8-1&keywords=linear+regression+analysis

Preview it. Now if that looks pretty intimidating to you, ask yourself if it is something you think you can understand. What is in that textbook is expected for you to understand even if the work you do in class is watered down a lot.

To truly understand that stuff you would have to be very skilled in mathematical reasoning and applications.

This is a 700 page book and it's only an introduction to linear regression, do you really think you can read it and fully understand it in two weeks?
https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Regression-Analysis-Douglas-Montgomery/dp/0470542810

What's the story here? https://www.amazon.com/Google-tests-software-Peter-Wright/dp/1728743656/