# Statisticians' and engineers' cross-reference of statistical terms

The following terms are used by electrical engineers in statistical signal processing studies instead of typical statistician's terms.

Statistics Electrical engineering
Null hypothesis Noise only hypothesis
Alternative hypothesis Signal + noise hypothesis
Critical region Signal present decision region
Type I error False alarm (FA) (noted as ${\displaystyle P_{FA}}$)
Type II error Miss [1]

In other engineering fields, particularly mechanical engineering, uncertainty analysis examines systematic and random components of variations in measurements associated with physical experiments.

## Notes

1. ^ The detection probability (noted as ${\displaystyle P_{D}}$) is frequently used instead of miss probability given by ${\displaystyle 1-P_{D}}$

## References

1. S.M. Kay, Fundamentals of Statistical Signal Processing, ISBN 0-13-504135-X.
2. H. Coleman and W. G. Steele, Experimentation and uncertainty analysis for engineers, ISBN 0-471-12146-0.