As engineers, we endeavor to improve or increase the reliability of the systems or components that we design. In that sense, reliability is the probability of a system or component meeting its requirements successfully. A component with 80% reliability has a probability of p=.8 of meeting it's requirements. As a result, we can see reliability as a specialized application of probability theory.

Use the rules of probability to explain how you would calculate the overall reliability ofone system that has three components that have to perform in series (and so all components must perform to have a successful outcome) versus another system that has three components that operate in parallel (and so only one of the three needs to perform to have a successful outcome).