Joel Smith, former technical sales manager at Minitab, wrote for the Minitab Blog from 2012-2016. He is currently director of rapid continuous improvement at Dr Pepper Snapple Group.
For the majority of my career, I've
had the opportunity to speak at conferences and other events
somewhat regularly. I thought some of my talks were pretty good,
and some were not so good (based on ratings, my audiences didn't
always agree with either—but that's a topic for another post). But
I would guess that well over 90% of the time, my proposals were
accepted to be presented at the... Continue Reading
In
Parts 1 and
2 of Gauging Gage we looked at the numbers of parts, operators,
and replicates used in a Gage R&R Study and how accurately we
could estimate %Contribution based on the choice for each. In
doing so, I hoped to provide you with valuable and interesting
information, but mostly I hoped to make you like me. I mean
like me so much that if I told you that you were doing... Continue Reading
In Part 1 of Gauging Gage, I looked at how adequate a
sampling of 10 parts is for a Gage R&R Study and providing
some advice based on the results.
Now I want to turn my attention to the other two factors in the
standard Gage experiment: 3 operators and 2 replicates.
Specifically, what if instead of increasing the number of parts in
the experiment (my previous post demonstrated you would need... Continue Reading
"You take 10 parts and have 3 operators measure each 2
times."
This standard approach to a Gage R&R experiment is so
common, so accepted, so ubiquitous that few people ever question
whether it is effective. Obviously one could look at whether
3 is an adequate number of operators or 2 an adequate number of
replicates, but in this first of a series of posts about
"Gauging Gage," I want to look at... Continue Reading
In the great 1971 movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate
Factory, the reclusive owner of the Wonka Chocolate Factory
decides to place golden tickets in five of his famous chocolate
bars, and allow the winners of each to visit his factory with a
guest. Since restarting production after three years of silence, no
one has come in or gone out of the factory. Needless to say, there
is enormous interest in... Continue Reading
Along with the explosion of interest in visualizing data over
the past few years has been an excessive focus on how attractive
the graph is at the expense of how useful it is. Don't get me
wrong...I believe that a colorful, modern graph comes across better
than a black-and-white, pixelated one. Unfortunately, however, all
the talk seems to be about the attractiveness and not the value of
the... Continue Reading
Allow me to make a confession up front: I won't hesitate to beat
my kids at a game.
My
kids are young enough that in pretty much any game that is
predominantly determined by skill and not luck, I can beat them—and
beat them easily. This isn't some macho thing where it makes me
feel good, and I suppose is only partially based in wanting them to
handle both winning and losing well. It's just how I... Continue Reading
Just 100 years ago,
very few statistical tools were available and the field was largely
unknown. Since then, there has been an explosion of tools
available, as well as ever-increasing awareness and use of
statistics.
While
most readers of the Minitab Blog are looking to pick up new tools
or improve their use of commonly-applied ones, I thought it would
be worth stepping back and talking about one... Continue Reading
Last month the ESPN series Outside the Lines reported
on major league pitchers suffering serious injuries from being
struck in the head by line drives, and efforts MLB is making
towards having protective gear developed for pitchers. You can view
the report here if you'd like:
A couple of things jump out at me from the clip:
The overwhelming majority of pitchers are not interested in
wearing... Continue Reading
I am M.
G - L - M.
That G - L - M!
That G - L - M!
I do not like
That G - L - M.
Do you like
Means and histograms?
I do not like them,
G - L - M.
I do not like
Means and histograms.
Would you like them
Halved or squared?
Would you like them
As a pair?
I would not like them
Halved or squared.
I would not like them
As a pair.
I do not like
Means and histograms.
I do not like them,
G - L - M.
Would you like... Continue Reading
I typically attend a few Lean Six Sigma conferences each year,
and at each there is at least one session about compensating belts.
Any number of ideas exist out there, but they commonly include
systems that provide a percentage of savings as a portion of pay or
provide a bonus for meeting target project savings. There are
always issues with these pay schemes, including the fact that... Continue Reading
On a recent vacation, I was unsuccessfully trying to reunite
with my family outside a busy shopping mall and starting to get a
little stressed. I was on a crowded sidewalk, in a busy city known
for crime, and it was raining. I thought there was no way
things could get more aggravating when something warm and solid hit
my arm and shirt.
A
bird had pooped on me.
Not having the kids with me, and being... Continue Reading
Learning to ride a bike is a rite of passage for any kid, so
much so that we even use the expression "taking the training wheels
off" for all kinds of situations. We say it to mean that we are
going to let someone perform an activity on their own after
removing some safeguard, even though we know they will likely
experience failures before becoming proficient at it.
You see, riding a bike requires... Continue Reading
In
Part I,
Part II, and
Part III we shared our experiment, the survey results, and the
experimental results. To wrap things up, we're going to see if the
survey results tied to the experimental results in any meaningful
way...
First, we look at whether self-identified knowledge correlated
to the total number of correct appraisals:
We have no evidence of a relationship (p = 0.795). So
we'll look... Continue Reading
In
Part I and
Part II we learned about the experiment and the survey,
respectively. Now we turn our attention to the results...
Our
first two participants, Danielle and Sheryl, enter the conference
room and are given blindfolds as we explain how the experiment will
proceed. As we administer the tasting, the colors of the wine
are obvious but we don't know the true types, which have been
masked... Continue Reading
In
Blind Wine Part I, we introduced our experimental setup, which
included some survey questions asked ahead of time of each
participant. The four questions asked were:
On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your knowledge of
wine?
How much would you typically spend on a bottle of wine in a
store?
How many different types of wine (merlot, riesling, cabernet,
etc.) would you buy regularly (not as... Continue Reading
Already relaxed on his first day in Napa, Brutus and his wife
Suzy decide to visit their favorite winery just before lunch to
taste their new Cabernet Sauvignon. The owner recognizes them as
they walk in the door and immediately seats them on the patio
overlooking the vineyard. Two glasses appear, and as the owner
tells them about the new Cabernet, Brutus prepares for an onslaught
of blackberry... Continue Reading
If
betting wasn't allowed on horse racing, the Kentucky Derby would
likely be a little-known event of interest only to a small group of
horse racing enthusiasts. But like the Tour de France, the World
Cup, and the Masters Tournament, even those with little or no
knowledge of the sport in general seem drawn to the excitement over
its premier event—the mint juleps, the hats...and of course,... Continue Reading
A
couple of years ago, I wrote a blog post titled "What I Learned
From Treating Childbirth as Failure" that conveniently ended up
getting published the day before my daughter was born.
You should read it first, but to summarize it demonstrates how we
can
predict the odds of an event happening during certain time
intervals even when the original data is highly
censored.
Since then, several people... Continue Reading
It has come to my attention recently that amidst the fun of
attending Super Bowl parties and watching the 2nd-most viewed
sporting event on earth there are some people—seedy characters with
questionable pasts, I'm sure—who are betting on the
game!
Now, as gambling on sporting events is highly regulated and
illegal in almost every state, I'm confident that reports of this
are overblown and that the... Continue Reading
