ABSTRACT
Statistics and specifically hypothesis testing are necessary tools for any decommissioning professional responsible for planning surveys and making decisions based on survey results. Statistics can be generally divided into (1) descriptive statistics and (2) inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics involve description of data sets by their central tendency (location) and variability (dispersion)—for example, mean, median, range, percentile, variance, standard deviation, and skewness. e MARSSIM DQA emphasizes the use of diagnostic tools such as histograms, posting plots, and quantile-quantile plots to better interpret the data. Inferential statistics consists of making informed decisions about various aspects of a set of values. Common inferential statistics include hypothesis testing and condence interval testing (or estimation). Indeed, NUREG/CR-5849 recommends condence interval testing for demonstrating compliance with release criteria, while the MARSSIM is based on hypothesis testing.
