How Two Guys From the Gold Country Are Changing Advertising Forever [the broken link has been removed] by Robert X. Cringely
Their secret is the Taguchi Method, which is a technique for designing experiments that converge on an ideal product solution.
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“I taught over 300 courses for industry where we designed cars and electronic devices, but it wasn’t until one day I took over my wife’s kitchen and used Taguchi to perfect my recipe for vanilla wafer cookies that I realized how broadly it could be applied,” Kowalick recalls. “It took 16 batches, but by the end of the afternoon I had those wafers dialed in.”
It is great to see the application of Designed Experiments increasing. I am reminded of an article by my father, William G. Hunter, from 1975: 101 Ways to Design an Experiment, or Some Ideas About Teaching Design of Experiments. Examples of the topics of the designed experiments his students performed:
- taste of stewed chicken
- toys child chose to sleep with
- quality of ground malt for brewing beer
- distance football was kicked
- absorption characteristics of activated carbon used with municipal waste water
I am also reminded of a fun article I ran across a few years ago: Three Romeos and a Juliet: – Our early brush with Design of Experiments.
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