Important announcement

Dear visitor,

Please note that this OpenCourseWare platform will be replaced at the end of 2026 by a new platform (under the same url ocw.tudelft.nl).

Courses and their contents that are currently available the platform will partly be migrated. URL’s for this content will change and content might be unavailable for some time. In addition, some courses will not be available anymore.

If you are linking to specific courses on this platform (for instance for your students), please take timely measures to avoid problems with access. Possible actions are:

  • Download the materials to your local platform (laptop, server)
  • For educators only (including TU Delft lecturers): Contact us at ocw@tudelft.nl and inform us what course you are using in what context (institute, program, period of use, number of students). We will research (in collaboration with the authors of the course) and decide if we will migrate the course, and if yes, can supply you with a new url.

Thank you.

Course Introduction

Course subject(s) 0. Getting started

A warm welcome to this course Observation Theory: Estimating the Unknown.

The course introduces a standardized approach for parameter estimation, using a functional model (relating the observations to the unknown parameters) and a stochastic model (describing the quality of the observations). Using the concepts of least squares and best linear unbiased estimation (BLUE), parameters are estimated and analyzed in terms of precision and significance. The course ends with the concept of the overall model test, to check the validity of the parameter estimation results using hypothesis testing. Emphasis is given to developing a standardized way to deal with estimation problems.

In addition, we offer a review of some concepts from linear algebra, statistics, and multivariate calculus that we will be using throughout the course. Take some time to have a look. You can find it in the Pre-knowledge Mathematics module. Reviewing this will help you to determine whether you are up to speed with these concepts; if you feel that you need to study some of the topics in more detail, there is still time to do so.

We hope you will enjoy the course!

Creative Commons License
Observation Theory: Estimating the Unknown by TU Delft OpenCourseWare is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://ocw.tudelft.nl/courses/observation-theory-estimating-unknown.
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