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 and variability-e.g. mean, median, variance, standard deviation, skewness. The MARSSIM data quality assessment (DQA) emphasizes the use of diagnostic tools like histograms, posting plots and quantile-quantile plots to better interpret the data. Inferential statistics consist of making informed decisions about various aspects of a set of values. Common inferential statistics include hypothesis testing and confidence interval testing (or estimation). Indeed, NUREG/CR-5849 recommends confidence interval testing for demonstrating compliance with release criteria, while the MARSSIM is based on hypothesis testing.
