I must admit, right up front, that this is not a totally unbiased review. I first became aware of Davis Balestracci in 1998, when I received the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Statistics Division Special Publication, Data “Sanity”: Statistical Thinking Applied to Everyday Data. At the time, I was still working in the Navy’s Total Quality Leadership (TQL) schoolhouse, having spearheaded the statistical process control course we taught to Navy Quality Advisors (TQL’s “Black Belts”). I was struck at the time by the apparent depth of his commitment to statistical thinking and data-based decision science, his iconoclastic style, and the simple, clear examples he used to illustrate the points he made in that publication.

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