This material supports the book “Statistics for Chemical Engineers: From Data to Models to Decisions” by Zavala, V. M. (2025), Cambridge University Press, ©. Official Cambridge Website

This site maps how the topics of the book connect, how often each one appears, and which ones the rest of the book depends on.

The pages

• Map. Every topic sits on a ring, grouped by family and colored accordingly. Larger circles are more important topics (by default, the hub score; you can size them by connections, mentions, subsections, examples, exercises, chapters or bridge score). Hover or click a topic to highlight its links; the panel shows where it appears, what it builds on, what builds on it, and a path back to its foundations. Pick a chapter to see only the topics that chapter mentions, with those it introduces outlined.
• Chapters. How the seven chapters build on each other. Each arc joins the chapter where a topic is introduced to a later chapter whose new topics build on it; cards summarize each chapter.
• Book Numbers. Totals for the book and rankings of topics by importance, mentions, reach and bridging.
• Topic Incidence. A topic-by-chapter table of mentions, showing which topics run through the whole book and which belong to one chapter.

How it is built

• Topics. A curated list of 93 statistical concepts in eight families (Probability, Random variables, Sampling, Estimation, Uncertainty Quantification, Learning, Signals, Decisions) plus 10 application areas, drawn from the book's chapters, sections and index. Each topic is recognized by a set of key phrases. Labels on the map are short; hover to see the full name.
• Incidence. Mentions counts key-phrase occurrences in the chapters; subsections, examples and exercises count the places that mention a topic at least once. Counts are automated, so they are indicators rather than exact figures.
• Links. Two topics are linked when they are mentioned together in the same subsection, example or exercise more often than their frequency alone would suggest (cosine association); each topic keeps its strongest links. A link runs from the topic introduced earlier in the book to the one introduced later (“builds on”). A topic is introduced in the first chapter that covers it substantially.
• Importance. The hub score is PageRank on the network of statistical concepts, scaled so the top topic is 100. The bridge score measures how often a topic lies on the shortest paths between others (betweenness centrality).