Category Archives: Data

Steve Jobs Discussing Customer Focus at NeXT

Video from 1991 when Steve Jobs was at NeXT. Even with the customer focus however, NeXT failed. But this does show the difficulty in how to truly apply customer focus. You have to be creative. You have examine data. You … Continue reading

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One factor at a time (OFAT) Versus Factorial Designs

Guest post by Bradley Jones Almost a hundred years ago R. A. Fisher‘s boss published an article espousing OFAT (one factor at a time). Fisher responded with an article of his own laying out his justification for factorial design. I … Continue reading

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Warren Buffett’s 2010 Letter to Shareholders

Warren Buffett has published his always excellent annual shareholder letter. His letters, provide excellent investing insight and good management ideas. Yearly figures, it should be noted, are neither to be ignored nor viewed as all-important. The pace of the earth’s … Continue reading

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Actionable Metrics

Metrics are valuable when they are actionable. Think about what will be done if certain results are shown by the data. If you can’t think of actions you would take, it may be that metric is not worth tracking. Metrics … Continue reading

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Incentivizing Behavior Doesn’t Improve Results

In the webcast Dan Pink shares research results exploring human motivation and ideas on how to manage organization given the scientific research on motivation. “once a task called for even rudimentary cognitive skill a larger reward led to poorer performance” … Continue reading

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Taxes per Person by Country

I think that the idea that data lies is false, and that such a notion is commonly held a sign of lazy intellect. You can present data in different ways to focus on different aspects of a system. And you … Continue reading

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Prophet Unheard: Dr. W. Edwards Deming – 1992

[embedded webcast links removed because they have been removed from YouTube. To see video with W. Edwards Deming see the Deming Institute YouTube channel.] This is an interesting video on Deming and American management (by the BBC in 1992): Prophet … Continue reading

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The Biggest Manufacturing Countries in 2008 with Historical Data

Once again the USA was the leading country in manufacturing for 2008. And once again China grew their manufacturing output amazingly. In a change with recent trends Japan grew output significantly. Of course, the 2009 data is going to show … Continue reading

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Highlights from Recent George Box Speech

The JMP blog has posted some highlights from George Box’s presentation at Discovery 2009 [the broken link was removed] Infusing his entire presentation with humor and fascinating tales of his memories, Box focused on sequential design of experiments. He attributed … Continue reading

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Deming: There is No True Value

There is no true value of anything: data has meaning based on the operational definition used to calculate the data. Walter Shewhart’s Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control, forward by W. Edwards Deming: There is no true value … Continue reading

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