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.

2. Learning objectives

Course subject(s) 2. Mathematical model

In this module you will learn how to develop a systematic approach to translate real-life problems into mathematical models. This will be in the form of a so-called system of observation equations, comprising four fundamental blocks:

  1. vector of observations,
  2. vector of unknown parameters,
  3. linear (or linearized) functional relation between observations and unknowns, and
  4. stochastic characteristics of observations in the form of dispersion (or covariance matrix) of the observation vector.

In addition, you will learn about different concepts, such as linear vs. nonlinear models, functional vs. stochastic models, consistent vs. inconsistent models, over/under-determined models, redundancy, and solvability of observation-equation systems. All the aforementioned concepts are explained by various practical examples.

Learning objectives

In this module you will learn to …

  • … formulate the mathematical model for a set of estimation problems (both functional and stochastic model).
  • … identify the various properties of mathematical models.
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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