Category Archives: Data

Friday Fun: Correlation

Posted on March 6, 2009 by John Hunter

From the excellent xkcd comic. Related: Correlation is Not Causation – Does the Data Deluge Make the Scientific Method Obsolete? – Understanding Data – Theory of Knowledge – What Makes Scientists Different 🙂 – Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Fun, Science, Statistics | Tagged Data, Fun, Statistics | Comments Off

Statistics for Experimenters in Spanish

Posted on January 5, 2009 by John Hunter

Statistics for Experimenters, second edition, by George E. P. Box, J. Stuart Hunter and William G. Hunter (my father) is now available in Spanish. Read a bit more can find a bit more on the Spanish edition, in Spanish. EstadÃstica … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Data, Design of Experiments, Statistics | Tagged Bill Hunter, Books, Data, Design of Experiments, engineering, experiments, George Box, Madison, Statistics, Statistics for Experimenters | Comments Off

What’s the Value of a Big Bonus?

Posted on November 21, 2008 by John Hunter

What’s the Value of a Big Bonus? by Dan Ariely To look at this question, three colleagues and I conducted an experiment. We presented 87 participants with an array of tasks that demanded attention, memory, concentration and creativity. We asked … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Psychology, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged bonus, Data, executive pay, experiments, extrinsic motivation, Psychology | Comments Off

Tilting at Ludicrous CEO Pay 2008

Posted on November 10, 2008 by John Hunter

I continue to tilt at the robber barron CEO pay packages (2007 post on CEO pay abuses). 2007 pay rank Company CEO Pay 5 Year Pay CEO % of 2007 Earnings 1 Apple Steve Jobs $646,600,000 $650,170,000 18.5% 2 Occidental … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Economics, Management, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged commentary, curiouscat, Economics, executive pay, overpaid executives, quote, respect for people, stakeholders | 5 Comments

Global Manufacturing Data 2007

Posted on October 30, 2008 by John Hunter

The updated data from the United Nations on manufacturing output by country clearly shows the USA remains by far the largest manufacturer in the world. UN Data, in billions of current US dollars: Country 1990 1995 2000 2005 2006 2007 … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Economics, India, Manufacturing, quote | Tagged Asia, China, curiouscat, economic data, Europe, Germany, India, Japan, Manufacturing, UK, USA | 1 Comment

Does the Data Deluge Make the Scientific Method Obsolete?

Posted on September 29, 2008 by John Hunter

The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete by Chris Anderson “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” So proclaimed statistician George Box 30 years ago, and he was right. But what choice did we … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Data, Innovation, Science | Tagged cool, Data, engineering, George Box, Google, Innovation, IT, quote, Science | 7 Comments

Hiring the Right Person

Posted on September 2, 2008 by John Hunter

Malcolm Gladwell presented at the New Yorker conference on the Challenge of Hiring in the Modern World. As usually, he provides some great thoughts. I wrote on Hiring the Right Workers The job market is an inefficient market. There are … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Fun, Management, webcast | Tagged Data, hiring, management, Systems thinking, webcast | 1 Comment

California Uses More Gas than China

Posted on July 17, 2008 by John Hunter

Amazing Stat: California Uses More Gas than China [the broken link was removed]: California alone uses more gasoline than any country in the world (except the US as a whole, of course). That means California’s 20 billion gallon gasoline and … Continue reading →

Posted in China, Data, Economics | Tagged China, economy | Comments Off

Outcome and In-Process Measures

Posted on July 14, 2008 by John Hunter

An outcome measure is used to measure the success of a system. For example, the outcome measure could be the percentage of people who do not get polio (the result). An output measure, for example, would be the number of … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Process improvement, quote | Tagged curiouscat, Data, Process improvement | 2 Comments

Fed Funds Rate Changes Don’t Presage Mortgage Rate Changes

Posted on May 13, 2008 by John Hunter

The recent drastic reductions again emphasize (once again) that changes in the federal funds rate are not correlated with changes in the 30 year fixed mortgage rate. In the last 4 months the discount rate has been reduced nearly 200 … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Economics | Comments Off