- Author
- Tavis, R. L. | Melin, J. W.
- Title
- Use of Technical Analysis in Editing. Civil Engineering Studies.
- Coporate
- Univ., Illinois, Urbana
- Sponsor
- National Bureau of Standards, Washington, DC
- Report
- NBS GCR 80-259; Structural Research Series No. 473, January 1980, 156 p.
- Distribution
- Available from National Technical Information Service
- Contract
- NBS-PO-714098
- Keywords
- codes | decision theory | editing | networks | specifications standards | systems analysis/engineering
- Abstract
- This manual puts forth a technology that enables analysts to assist authors of laws, regulations, codes, standards, and specifications in reducing the risk of imprecision. The techniques move from the basic premise that much imprecision in such documents occures in the verbal expression of interconnection, and at significant levels of detail. The technology makes use of decision tables and trees to express interconnected logic, of an information network to express interconnected precedence, and of equivalency lists to express equivalence of terms used in the verbal expression. Three iterative cycles are used: the translation of the verbal expression of a text to a technical expression (i.e. the decision tables, information network, and equivalency lists); the preparation of an analytic commentary on the technical expression; and the editing of both the technical and the verbal expressions to reduce imprecision. Previously developed computer programs assist in the development and analysis of the technical expression.