No True Value
Single number estimates are virtually always wrong because there is measurement spread and the values observed depend on the measuring method used.
Systems and Improvement
Dr. W. E. Deming was fond of saying in his seminars, “This diagram was on the wall in Japan.” Deming, an esteemed statistician who is perhaps best known for his work in Japan, later made systems thinking one of the four parts of what he call the System of Profound Knowledge, profound, he said, because [...]
Analytic and Enumerative Studies
Let’s review the difference between the two types of studies and then consider the analytic situation. The distinction between Analytic and Enumerative studies was first proposed by Dr. W. Edwards Deming in his book, “Some Theory of Sampling”, originally published in 1950. In the enumerative study we are simply trying to describe an available entity. [...]
Some theoretical thinking
Deming was fond of saying, management is prediction and, in this, I think he was exactly right. Management never takes action or makes decision to affect what happened yesterday, but rather to bring about what is hoped to be a desirable outcome tomorrow. Even when a manager is reacting to yesterday’s crisis, the action taken [...]
