I contributed an article to the Process Excellence Network’s Deming Files that was published yesterday: How Do We Know What We Know?. I took on the task of explaining the theory of knowledge, as one article in a four part series looking at the four components of Dr. Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge.
The other 3 articles are:
- Systems Thinking and the Three Musketeers by Eric Christiansen
- The Trouble with Motivation by Jussi Kyllonen
- Variation, So Meaningful Yet So Misunderstood by Lynda Finn
I hope you enjoy all 4 articles. Every two weeks a new article is published by the Deming Files exploring Dr. Deming’s ideas on management. The articles provide a nice dose of views on applying Deming’s ideas today. The network also has series on Drucker ideas and articles on many other management topics (six sigma, lean, etc.).
Related: Deming on Management – 2009 post: How do we Know What we Know – Data Doesn’t Lie, We Can Draw Incorrect Conclusions from Data – Correlation is Not Causation
knowledge builds on information. statisticians generate information on the basis of data and analysis. to become better at this we need tools to assess the quality of the information we produce.
in my paper with galit shmueli, Quality, Risk and the Taleb Quadrants, we propose such a tool set.
better information will help us better manage knowledge. deming has broaden the role of statisticians to an overall responsibility for creating knowledge and information. we need better tools for this.