ABSTRACT
The Voyager spacecraft exemplify the interdependence between mathematics, statistics, engineering and science, and the role of statistics in the space program is discussed. The following sections offer suggestions for the use of the book, including experiments given in Appendix E. A theoretical argument is more memorable if it is demonstrated by experiment, and together the two approaches reinforce statistical principles. Reasons for choosing MATLAB and the open source software R for examples are discussed. In particular they are ideally suited to making calculations using equations derived from theory, and checking these calculations with the inbuilt statistical functions.
