engineering

Richard Doll Building

Richard Doll Building is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Richard Doll Building rather than just read about it. In short: The Richard Doll Building (RDB) is a University of Oxford building on the Old Road Campus, in Headington, east Oxford, England. The building is named after the physician and epidemiologist Sir Richard Doll CH OBE FRS (1912–2005).

Key takeaways

Richard Doll Building belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Richard Doll Building to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Richard Doll Building from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Richard Doll Building (RDB) is a University of Oxford building on the Old Road Campus, in Headington, east Oxford, England. The building is named after the physician and epidemiologist Sir Richard Doll CH OBE FRS (1912–2005). The building houses the Nuffield Department of Population Health and includes the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, Clinical Trial Service Unit, Epidemiological Studies Unit, Cancer Epidemiology Unit, Screening Unit, and the Office of the Regius Professor of Medicine. The Richard Doll Building was designed by Nicholas Hare Architects in 2006. The building is 9,000m2 and won the RIBA South-East Award in 2007. A plaque inside the building contains the following quotation by Richard Doll:

Death in old age is inevitable, but death before old age is not. In previous centuries 70 years used to be regarded as humanity's allotted span of life, and only about one in five lived to such an age. Nowadays, however, for non-smokers in Western countries, the situation is reversed: only about one in five will die before 70, and the non-smoker death rates are still decreasing, offering the promise, at least in developed countries, of a world where death before 70 is uncommon. For this promise to be properly realised, ways must be found to limit the vast damage that is now being done by tobacco and to bring home, not only to the many millions of people in developed countries but also the far larger populations elsewhere, the extent to which those who continue to smoke are shortening their expectation of life by so doing.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Richard Doll Building

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Richard Doll Building claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Richard Doll Building before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Richard Doll Building ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Richard Doll Building

In research: Richard Doll Building appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Richard Doll Building in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Richard Doll Building is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2006 establishments in England, Buildings and structures completed in 2006, Buildings and structures of the University of Oxford, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Richard Doll Building outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Richard Doll Building in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Richard Doll Building means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Richard Doll Building out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Richard Doll Building in simple terms?

Why does Richard Doll Building matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Richard Doll Building?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Richard Doll Building.