RE: Info

["Prevette, Steven S" <Steven_S_Prevette@rl.gov>]

Vladimir asked:  But what became quite amazing for me: during these
presentations the audience reaction showed that many statisticians present
aren't acquainted with Deming's theory of variability.  What do you think:
is this by chance or regularity?

I believe that it is common cause.  Dr. Deming lamented the poor state of
affairs (in his opinion) of statistical training that focuses upon
distribution fitting and hypothesis testing.  I can vouch that during my
Masters Degree work in Operations Research that the bulk of the statistical
training was in these two items.  Only one course dealt with control charts.
And no course or instructor made much point of the maintenance of the time
series in a set of data.  But it was a good background in the Theory of
Variation.  One thing the faculty stated (and this was a US Navy school) was
to remember "the answer is never 3".  The answer is never a single point
estimate, but must include some variability band. 

I was not introduced to Dr. Deming's work until after the degree work was
completed.  For that, the US Navy training was rather weak, but at least was
an exposure.

Steve Prevette
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