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Favorite posts from three rings in a carnival of management blogs: Round 1 – “Work Matters” by Bob Sutton
Posted by mark in Uncategorized on December 28, 2009
John Hunter, being a son of quality guru Bill Hunter, appreciates the value of design of experiments (DOE) for process improvement. He often mentions DOE in his blog The Curious Cat Management Improvement Site — with this StatsMadeEasy blog being cited on a few occasions. I keep tabs on Curious Cat to see what John turns up that might hit a hot button for me. So when John asked me to participate in this year’s Annual Management Improvement Blog Carnival, I readily agreed to join a number of other bloggers favored by him to select top 2009 posts from within our community.
See us hosts and the blogs we’ve chosen to review at this site coordinated by John. As you can see, StatsMadeEasy is culling the best of these bloggers:
This last blog – one of many proffered by John that focus on agile programming – is reviewed by my son Hank, who codes for Stat-Ease.
Bob Sutton offers many impressive credentials but the one that caught my eye was Weird Ideas That Work – a book he authored. I’m always on the lookout for non-intuitive approaches that improve process effectiveness. One of Sutton’s suggestions is to “increase variance in available knowledge.” That’s a good twist for an aficionado of stats!
Here my favorite 2009 posts by Bob:
- 1/20, Brainstorming: Pros and Cons provides a balanced view of whether it works to gather a group for generation of ideas. I’ve been intrigued by this since my days as a Product Manager at General Mills (chemical division) when I would lead brainstorms with our R&D scientists and engineers. Note the comment by blogger Keith Harmeyer (SmartStorming) that “the ideal situation is a combination of solo ideation and brainstorming.” I agree with that because it draws out ideas from the introverts — perhaps propensity to speak one’s mind is inversely correlated to quality of comment. ; )
- 3/9 Dilbert and The Smart Talk Trap re-tells a story from Weird Ideas That Work in which a brainstorming leader at Microsoft asked “What would be the worst product we could possibly build?” His idea was to think opposite but, of course, the crazy idea is what management liked. Coincidentally I was watching the movie Revolutionary Road, which features a cynical worker in a downtrodden ‘50s office (played wonderfully by Leonard DiCaprio) who, after deciding to quit this rat race, fires off a flippant flyer to the Toledo branch. This then gets him a promotion for thinking out of the box!
“Ideas that seem dumb may have more merit than you think.” — Bob Sutton
- 7/6 Wisdom, Randomness, and the Naskapi Indians provides a good example of how one can often benefit by choosing a direction at random. This works well for me when deciding at poker game whether to bluff or not. I won’t say anything more because one of my buddies might read this, so it would cost me.
- 10/7/09 Squeaky Wheels, The Health Care Debate, and Student Complaints About Grades reveals how Sutton, a professor at Stanford University, deals with students who complain about grades. Being a stoic Minnesotan who was taught to grin and bear it, I like his thinking on this!
- 11/1/09 Intuition vs. Data-Driven Decision-Making: Some Rough Ideas supports Sutton’s view “that intuition and analysis are not opposing perspectives, but tag team partners that, under the best conditions, where hunches are followed and then evaluated with evidence…” My world of statistical design of experiments is data driven, of course. However, the big breakthroughs in process and product improvement often come from subject-matter experts who come up with a brilliant hunch that pans out. The classic book on DOE Statistics for Experimenters, co-authored by Bill Hunter (the father of John Hunter who is the ring-master for this carnival of blogs), begins with a wonderful treatise on induction versus deduction that I recommend to all experimenters.
I would be remiss not to provide a heads up to the elephant in the room at the Work Matters blog: Sutton devotes many of his posts to the bad behavior of bosses – a bugaboo for me too. The difference is that I keep my expletive (***hole!!!) private, whereas Sutton is brave enough to shout it out. Most of you may find this scintillating, but those who consider prim to be professional: Be forewarned about some rough language. One of the tamer and thought-provoking posts (29 comments) is the October 18th one asking Do You Learn More from Working for a Bad Boss than a Good Boss? Another post that takes the high road came on December 22 (just the other day) relating The Boss’s Journey: The Path to Simplicity and Competence. Being of a certain age (not far from Bob’s) I had to chuckle at his story of a student who disrespected managers until becoming the boss of a small product development team made him realize how hard this role can be.
Pushing the limits on alcohol levels for holiday cheer – higher the better (?)
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on December 24, 2009
Just in time for holiday gift-givers to the guy who already owns everything, Boston Beer Company (BBC) — brewer of Sam Adams lager — announced this year that they’d achieved new heights for alcohol content – over 25 percent by volume. Alcohol levels traditionally have been capped at the 14% level due to natural limits of the yeast that drive fermentation. However, the beer boffins at BBC applied their wits to the zymurgy and came up with “Utopia,” which can be purchased at $599.99 a mini-kettle via this internet purveyor (warning: it’s banned in 13 states!). Otherwise you can await the next batch of ten thousand bottles or so of this potent beer to emerge in two years from the 15-year aging cycle.*
Perhaps this holiday season you may restrict yourself to tamer drinks than high-alcohol beer, such as the traditional eggnog — a “sweetened dairy-based beverage made with milk, cream, sugar, beaten eggs (which gives it a frothy texture), and flavored with ground cinnamon” (according to Wikipedia). However, my plans to pick up our annual eggnog after Thanksgiving were dashed after listening to a recent radio broadcast of NPR’s Science Friday by Ira Flatow. They warned about people (like me) risking salmonella-induced food poisoning by milking their ‘nog clear through Christmas. The show posted this video reporting results from microbiologist Vince Fischetti on his challenge tests** in a lab at the Rockefeller University (RU). I’ve seen these at food clients of Stat-Ease and they gross me out, so I know the end result of dosing up a dairy product with spoilage organisms and pathogens cannot be pretty. Fischetti compared the results after one month of storing a spiked eggnog made by a traditional RU recipe (equal parts bourbon and rum to a 20 % alcohol level) versus one purchased commercially (no alcohol). See the outcome by watching the video – it may encourage you to keep a bottle of spirits on hand. (I’ve got a supply of tequila – just in case.) Being a devotee of DOE, I must say that Fischetti’s findings appear to be based only on sample-size 1. But to his credit, he expresses the desire for grant money leading to more definitive studies.
So whether you hoist a beer or a ‘cheered-up’ glass of eggnog to give your seasonal salute to your friends and family, here’s hoping you all a happy holiday!
*Source for news about high-alcohol beer: 11/30/09 article by Russell Contreras of the Associated Press, seen here as published by the Huffington Post.
** For all the gory details see this posting of Microbiological Challenge Testing by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). The “Phoenix” phenomenon is particularly worrying (lethal bugs rising from the ashes of sterilization).
The State of happiness
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on December 20, 2009
Those of you American citizens who (like me) enjoy our unalienable pursuit of happiness should see where your home State ranks in this list presented by economists Andrew Oswald and Stephen Wu.
Our local newspaper headlined this report with the suggestion that we Minnesotans “try living in a sunnier State.” I have a hard time arguing with moving to Hawaii or Florida – both near the top the Oswald-Wu list. Louisiana (#1) is a good choice too, I think, despite the setback of Hurricane Katrina. I spent time there and in the neighboring State of Mississippi (#7) last March – a great time to get out of Minnesota (#26). However, I really do enjoy our winters here in the northernmost part of the lower 48. At this time of the year our sun sits nearly at its lowest point (Winter solstice being mid-day tomorrow), which makes any rays one can catch all the more dear.
This morning a little Canadian ‘clipper’ topped off our existing blanket of snow with another inch of sun-sparkled crystals. It was good to be outdoors walking the dog through our little “Sunwood” park of evergreens again after taking a little break on our daily strolls last week due to the bitter cold. Maybe it was just as well we stayed home because a cougar came through our neighborhood (called “Croixwood”) as evidenced by the huge paw print pictured here . The cougar was last sighted in Wisconsin. My guess is that this cat is headed for Florida. =^.^=
STEM grads leaking outside their field
Posted by mark in Uncategorized on December 6, 2009
The latest issue (12/5/09) of Science News introduced me to the acronym “STEM,” which stands for science, technology, engineering and math. (I presume that statisticians fall under the last field.) They published an alarming graph* showing that less than half of all STEM grads remain in their field beyond three years.
“Highly qualified students may be choosing a non-STEM job because these other occupations are higher paying, offer better career prospects such as advancement, employment stability, and/or prestige…”
— B. Lindsay Lowell, Hal Salzman, Hamutal Bernstein, with Everett Henderson
Stat-Ease specializes in design of experiments (DOE) for industrial research. Therefore, the more who stay with STEM the better, so far as I’m concerned. However, I plead guilty to going for the money by pursuing a master’s degree in business administration. This led to me being promoted out of my chemical engineering job in R&D to a position as product manager. My business partner Pat Whitcomb went for a master’s in chemical engineering, thus sticking with STEM. He and I enjoy ribbing each other about our diverging paths, but it turned out to be very synergistic having these complementary mindsets (technical versus business). I figure that in high-tech companies like ours, it can’t hurt to have managers with a STEM degree, at least undergraduate, thus it may not be worth trying to stem this tide.
*See Figure 4 from this October 2009 report on three generations of students by researchers (quoted above) from Georgetown, Rutgers and The Urban Institute.
PS. The STEM Education Coalition co-chaired by the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the National Science Teachers Association works to maintain the USA’s edge in technology – primarily via K-12 education.. The American Statistical Association (ASA) is a participating organization along with dozens of others in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.
Experiments for school now safer, but less educational
Posted by mark in Uncategorized on October 18, 2009
A colleague in our field of experimental design told me today that he will be making a big career change by moving out of industrial research to teaching high-school science. He may think twice about this after seeing this thread from TheScientist Community that educators’ caution is killing science fun. Actually, being a bit squeamish about blood and guts, I like the idea of dissecting a jellybean rather than a frog. That’s sweet!
The blog stemmed from this TimesOnline article detailing how School lab health and safety rules ‘could stop future scientists’ . I like their picture of students in a high school chemistry lab who are clearly thrilled by their production of a huge flame-ball. That seems very educational! Unfortunately, this sort of thing, such as making volcanoes, can no longer be tolerated. That’s a pity, I think.
On a brighter note, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, an independent charity dedicated to connecting people with the world of science, report that kids are keen to do more experiments, according to this SchoolGate blog.
“When things are taught without true experimentation, students don’t understand it. And that needs to change. Children can do science at school, but they don’t necessarily learn what a real scientist is – planning an experiment, needing to repeat things, having a clear hypothesis and testing it.”
— Baroness Susan Greenfield. Director of the Royal Institution
I enjoyed many fun and educational experiments in my school career, back when the teacher ruled supreme. All of them impressed on us the importance of being safe and we learned first-hand how to handle hazardous chemicals and biological materials. My favorite in-class experiment, which I doubt would be allowed nowadays, was a fermentation reaction that my team of high-school honors students ran as our final project for senior biology class. The alcoholic product, albeit not of vintage quality, served very well, we judged. I do not exactly recall the consequences, but they must not have been too bad, because the teacher gave us a pass.
Are you happy? If so, be careful not to laugh: It may trigger gelotophobia!
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on August 20, 2009
Check out this freely posted study by math & stats profs Dodds & Danforth (“D&D”) on Measuring the Happiness of Large-Scale Written Expression: Songs, Blogs, and Presidents. Or for a simpler synopsis, see this spin by PHYSorg.com, which harkens back to a utopian dream of “hedonometers” measuring happiness. Not surprising, the D&D hedonometer dropped way down on the day of Michael Jackson’s death this summer. 🙁
>”Our method is only reasonable for large-scale texts, like what’s available on the Web,” Dodds says. “Any one sentence might not show much. There’s too much variability in individual expression.” But that’s the beauty of big data sets* and statistics.< — Source: PHYSorg.com
Here’s an observation by D&D really tickles my ribs: Happiness of blogs increased steadily from 2005 to 2009, exhibiting a striking rise and fall with blogger age and distance from the Earth’s equator. Figure 9 of their publication reveals a maximum happiness valence near my age (56 years), latitude (45 degrees North) and the day I normally blog (Sunday). Thus I think that StatsMadeEasy must be near the top of the blog pile for cheerfulness, particularly given my guiding principal to keep it simple and make it fun (KISMIF).**
Nevertheless, I am throwing in a wet blanket over this whole write-up by alerting you to a recent (8/1/09) Science News report about “When Humor Humiliates.” I now fear that being overtly happy, to the extent of laughing out loud (LOL), might provoke hard feelings from those who suffer from gelotophobia – fear of being laughed at. According to a survey of more than 20,000 people in 73 countries this phobia is widespread, but particularly active in certain cultures. The USA seems to fare well in specific aspects of gelotophobia – particularly the city of Cincinnati. So if you just cannot contain your belly laugh, let it all out there in the midsection of America. 😉
* These two enterprising professors report they examined nearly 10 million blog sentences!
** Search on “happiness” for my prior musings on statistics related to this subject.
Regions with aging populations are experiencing higher death rates!
Posted by mark in politics, Uncategorized on August 10, 2009
If the USA moves to government-sponsored health care on the scale of Europe, death rates here (now 8.3 per thousand) are sure to increase to the trans-Atlantic level of 10.3 — that’s a fear which Economist Edward Lotterman rebuts in his newspaper column today. As you educated readers might guess, the discrepancy in death rates can be easily explained by differing demographics: Due differing post-WWII dynamics, Europe’s population is older than ours, which can be seen in these animated population pyramids on Europe versus the United States developed by Professor Gerhard K. Heilig.
Specific statistics like this, when used indiscriminately by strongly-biased people, give statistics as a whole a bad name. However, those who are not duly diligent in vetting inflammatory stats are just as much to blame as the originators misleading them.
“It is proven that the celebration of birthdays is healthy. Statistics show that those people who celebrate the most birthdays become the oldest.” — Widely quoted as stemming from a PhD thesis by S. den Hartog (perhaps too good to be true!)
Technology facilitates building a stronger database on blood pressure and other medical measurements
Posted by mark in Uncategorized on April 20, 2009
Some years ago my wife was diagnosed with high blood pressure (hypertension). This necessitated regular measurements with an instrument called a sphygmomanometer, which took me a long while to master for spelling and pronunciation. Being a chemical engineer helped – we used manometers to track barometric pressure. The hard part is the “sphygmo” – a Greek word meaning to throb or pulse. However, it works nicely for blood pressure!
Blood pressure measurements via the mercury gravity sphygmomanometer are still considered to be “gold standard.” Nevertheless, electronic devices are far easier to use and affordable for home use. To help my wife keep track of blood pressure, I bought one made by Panasonic. This came in handy when I developed heart problems of my own – chronicled in my article “How DOE Saved My Life and Made it Worth Living” in the June 2008, Stat-Teaser.
This week’s CRNtech brought news of a Digital Blood Pressure Check via an inexpensive (less than $100) device that connects via USB to a PC for capturing results. This data can then be uploaded to Microsoft’s HeathVault. From there you can enable care givers to watch for statistical trends.
My guess is that by repeated measurements over time, facilitated by this do-it-yourself system, medical professionals would get a far more precise assessment of hypertension. This may be the answer to Blood Pressure Variability: The Challenge of Variation – an issue recognized in this recent publication of the American Journal of Hypertension (2008, 21 3–4).
“It is therefore practically impossible for a clinician to know whether he is changing a drug or dose in response to chance variation in blood pressure or true changes in the underlying mean blood pressure.”
— Tom P Marshall, Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, University of Birmingham
TV detectives stumble over odds of matching birthdays
Posted by mark in Uncategorized on April 12, 2009
PS. The photo is one of my all-time favorites from the family album — it’s my son Hank, who helps me with this blog. The Anderson clan now is up to 9 counting those who’ve married in. So far none of us share a birthday.
The science of “guesstimation”
Posted by mark in Uncategorized on April 5, 2009
The latest National Geographic Science column on Mind Games shows a jar of jelly beans (presumably provided by the Easter bunny) and it offers a formula for estimating the number:
1. Count the jars radius (r) in beans. (This is hard to see due to the angle of the picture, but let’s say r equals 5.)
2. Estimate the height (h) in beans. (I can count this fairly easily from the photo – h equals 35.)
3. The volume (V) in beans is: V = 3 h r^2, where the constant 3 is a round-off on the circular constant pi. (So I estimate the beans in the National Geographic jar number 3x35x5^2, or 3x35x25 – the product of which is 2,625.)
The scientific, calculated estimate I made (2,625) for the count of jelly beans came a lot closer than my initial guess of ten thousand: The answer is 4,466. Going to all this effort might be worth it if you come across a bean-counting contest with a prize worth taxing your math skills.
Meanwhile, two professors at Old Dominion University in Virginia, one a mathematician (John Adam) and the other a physicist (Lawrence Weinstein), have teamed up to provide a primer on Guesstimation: Solving the World’s Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin. As the publisher Princeton University Press says: “The ability to estimate is an important skill in daily life.”
As the father of five, I frequently was asked to help with math problems. First I’d ask that the student (my kid) work out a bottom-line number. Then I’d suggest they do a “reality check” by estimating the answer to at least the order of magnitude. That often sent them back to the beginning of the problem due to their first answer being so obviously wrong. The way facts and figures get thrown around the airwaves and internet nowadays it’s more important than ever to do reality checks.
I’ll bet this new book will be very helpful to equip reality checkers with the tools they need to achieve more accuracy. I learned about Guesstimation from its review in the March 31st New York Times. The Times article provides an interesting test of estimating ability: How many times does the American teenager say “like”? I heard this much more from my three daughters than my two sons, thus I hypothesize that there’s a gender bias. I’d hear this so word so over-used –- at least, like, once per sentence –- that I’d start counting them aloud, thus creating a great deal of aggravation for my teenager. I suppose the work “like” might come out ten times a minute and one hundred times per conversation. So I’m going to say a thousand “likes” per day could be in the realm of possibility. However, some teenagers are not afflicted by this word termite. My guess is ten thousand “likes” per year per teenager. To learn the answer, take this eight-question test of your estimation abilities.