Category Archives: Data

Hiring – Does College Matter?

Posted on September 6, 2007 by John Hunter

Another essay by Paul Graham packed with great thoughts – this one on hiring, colleges, measuring performance of people, etc.. Practically everyone thinks that someone who went to MIT or Harvard or Stanford must be smart. Even people who hate … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Education, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology | Comments Off

Data Visualization

Posted on August 30, 2007 by John Hunter

Data is often displayed poorly, making it difficult to see what is important. When data is displayed well the important facts should leap off the page and into the viewers mind. Edward Tufte is an expert on this topic with … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Creativity, Data, IT, Management, Psychology | Tagged charts, Data, visual communication, visual management | Comments Off

Data Based Blathering

Posted on August 17, 2007 by John Hunter

Ok, this is one of those posts you might want to ignore or you might enjoy. Before blogs there is little chance this would reach you. But I am tired of seeing the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) promoted as … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Economics, Google, Toyota Production System (TPS) | 3 Comments

Data Can’t Lie

Posted on August 9, 2007 by John Hunter

Many people state that data can lie. Obviously data can’t lie. There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies and statistics – Mark Twain Many people don’t understand the difference between being manipulated because they can’t understand what the … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Management, Psychology | Tagged curiouscat, Data, evidence based management, Statistics | 13 Comments

Mistakes in Experimental Design and Interpretation

Posted on June 19, 2007 by John Hunter

Mistakes in Experimental Design and Interpretation Humans are very good at detecting patterns, but rather poor at detecting randomness. We expect random incidents of cancer to be spread homogeneously, when in fact true randomness results in random clusters, not homogeneity. … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Design of Experiments, Management, Psychology, Science, Statistics | 2 Comments

Be Careful What You Measure

Posted on May 9, 2007 by John Hunter

Be Careful What You Measure by Mike Wroblewski: Although this recalculation of productivity had a positive affect, it is not what I would consider a triumph. Ongoing efforts are still required to truly increase productivity, so it’s back to gemba. … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Process improvement, Psychology | Tagged Data, organization as a system, Psychology | 6 Comments

Data Visualization Example

Posted on March 28, 2007 by John Hunter

[I replaced the embedded video, since Google broke the original link with the way they shut down Google Video after buying YouTube] In Myths About the Developing World, Hans Rosling shows some great graphics to display data on health care … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Economics, Health care, Management, webcast | Tagged Data, Economics, health care system, visual communication | 3 Comments

Metrics and Software Development

Posted on March 27, 2007 by John Hunter

Lean-based Metrics for Agile CM Environments [the broken link was removed] by Brad Appleton, Robert Cowham and Steve Berczuk: Measure Up! Don’t use metrics to measure individuals in a way that compares their performance to others or isolates the value … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Software Development, Theory of Constraints | Tagged Data, in-process measures, Software Development | 5 Comments

Jeffrey Pfeffer on Evidence-Based Practices

Posted on March 11, 2007 by John Hunter

Jeffrey Pfeffer Testifies to Congress About Evidence-Based Practices [the broken link was removed]: In this short statement, I want to make five points as succinctly as possible, providing references for background and documentation for my arguments. First, organizations in both … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Data, Management, Performance Appraisal, Public Sector, Statistics, Systems thinking | Tagged evidence based management, Public Sector | Comments Off

Website Data

Posted on March 5, 2007 by John Hunter

The Alexa toolbar, from amazon.com (and by the guy, Brewster Kahle, who created the internet archive too, by the way) is one way to get some idea of how popular a web site is (the toolbar shows the web site … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming | 1 Comment