Douglas C. Fair
Data overload has become a common malady. Modern data collection technologies and low-cost database storage have motivated companies to collect data on almost everything. The result? Data overload....
Scott A. Hindle
We are one year away from the 100th anniversary of the creation of the control chart: Walter Shewhart created the control chart in 1924 as an aid to Western Electric’s manufacturing operations. Since...
Donald J. Wheeler
In last month’s column, we looked at how process-hyphen-control algorithms work with a process that is subject to occasional upsets. This column will consider how they work with a well-behaved...
Douglas C. Fair
Today’s manufacturing systems have become more automated, data-driven, and sophisticated than ever before. Visit any modern shop floor and you’ll find a plethora of IT systems, HMIs, PLC data streams...
Donald J. Wheeler
Many articles and some textbooks describe process behavior charts as a manual technique for keeping a process on target. For example, in Norway the words used for SPC (statistical process control)...
Donald J. Wheeler
As we learned last month, the precision to tolerance ratio is a trigonometric function multiplied by a scalar constant. This means that it should never be interpreted as a proportion or percentage....
Harish Jose
The success run theorem is one of the most common statistical rationales for sample sizes used for attribute data.
It goes in the form of:
Having zero failures out of 22 samples, we can be 90%...
Donald J. Wheeler
A simple approach for quantifying measurement error that has been around for over 200 years has recently been packaged as a “Type 1 repeatability study.” This column considers various questions...
Kari Miller
Since 2010, citations for insufficient corrective action and preventive action (CAPA) procedures have been at the top of the list of the most common issues within the U.S. Food and Drug...
Donald J. Wheeler
Chunky data can distort your computations and result in an erroneous interpretation of your data. This column explains the signs of chunky data, outlines the nature of the problem that causes it, and...
Donald J. Wheeler
The keys to effective process behavior charts are rational sampling and rational subgrouping. As implied by the word rational, we must use our knowledge of the context to collect and organize data in...
Harish Jose
I’m looking at a topic in statistics. I’ve had a lot of feedback on one of my earlier posts on OC curves and how one can use them to generate a reliability/confidence statement based on sample size (...
Donald J. Wheeler
Ever since 1935 people have been trying to fine-tune Walter Shewhart’s simple but sophisticated process behavior chart. One of these embellishments is the use of two-sigma “warning” limits. This...
Donald J. Wheeler
As the foundations of modern science were being laid, the need for a model for the uncertainty in a measurement became apparent. Here we look at the development of the theory of measurement error and...
Donald J. Wheeler
In memory of Al Phadt, Ph.D.
This article is a reprint of a paper Al and I presented several years ago. It illustrates how the interpretation and visual display of data in their context can...
Donald J. Wheeler
The shape parameters for a probability model are called skewness and kurtosis. While skewness at least sounds like something we might understand, kurtosis simply sounds like jargon. Here we’ll use...
Alan Metzel
Almost seven years ago, Quality Digest presented a short article by Matthew Barsalou titled “A Worksheet for Ishikawa Diagrams.” At the time, I commented concerning enhancements that provide...
Donald J. Wheeler
The computation for skewness does not fully describe everything that happens as a distribution becomes more skewed. Here we shall use some examples to visualize just what skewness does—and does not—...
Tony Boobier
Does your use of probabilities confuse your audience? Sometimes even using numbers can be misleading. The notion of a 1-in-a-100-year flood doesn’t prevent the possibility of flooding occurring in...
Donald J. Wheeler
There are four major questions in statistics. These can be listed under the headings of description, probability, inference, and homogeneity. An appreciation of the relationships between these four...
