Lack of Deming Philosophy in Education

[Rip Stauffer <rstauffer@bluefirepartners.com>]

> 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?

Just a couple of thoughts for discussion - we have talked in this thread
about the lack of focus on enumerative studies in academic statistical
programs, we've heard from some folks who actually have Deming-based
programs, and from some others whose SPC courses aren't accepted by either
Business or Math schools.

I think there are a couple of questions bubbling up here...One, why has the
Deming Philosophy, SoPK, etc.., dropped from the quality literature, both in
academia and in the mainstream? The other, what about statistical thinking
and the theory of variation--why don't most academic programs teach that?

To the first question, we see occasional references, and some books still
mention the 14 points and other ideas, but for the most part, it has slipped
into the background. Why? We know it's powerful, we feel it must be right,
where it has been applied it's worked very well. How did it slip out of the
limelight? Is it because:

 - the '90s bubble put most business writers in "la-la land?"
 - Welch turned quality into cost-cutting, at least with his early approach
to Six Sigma?
 - learning to learn is just harder than applying some tools with a formula?

I certainly don't know the answer. The organizations I work with are still
MBO and Performance Evaluation driven, they still see competition (internal
and external) as the natural and unchangeable order of things (and good),
they don't have data or know how to use it, and they still throw things over
the wall at each other with no thought of a coherent system. Many managers
think that Welch was right, you have to fire the bottom 10 percent each year
(and, by the way, "you know who they are").

To the second question, I presented some of my own data, but it occurred to
me that we can't get the school of Math or the school of Business (or any
other school) to re-examine their statistics programs until we can get them
to understand the System of Profound Knowledge, and begin to understand that
the outcome of their educational processes should be a coherent whole that
resembles Profound Knowledge. Critical thinking and logical reasoning are
little encouraged outside of philosophy, "numeracy" or whatever you want to
use, are lacking in many mathematical programs, as are discussions of
problems with probability (it's counter-intuitive and presents some
interesting paradoxes when viewed from a pure mathematical viewpoint).
Because the majority of advanced statistical theory is taught in math
classes, often to engineers, the human side of SoPK (philosophy and
psychology) goes largely ignored by those with the highest levels of
statistical education.

I hope that made some sense, it's really just a lot of random thoughts.
Please don't think that I think I have any answers. As I read my DEN
messages this morning, it just came to me that we probably can't change the
way statistics is taught or presented unless we can get people to appreciate
a system, and how statistical thinking supports that system.

Best regards to all,

Rip

P.S. FYI, Howard Gitlow at the University of Miami has been administering
Deming-based Masters and PhD programs in quality for many years now, all
firmly grounded in the Deming Philosophy (even his recent Six Sigma
programs).

Rip Stauffer, Senior Consultant
BlueFire Partners
1300 Fifth St. Towers, 150 So. Fifth St.
Minneapolis, MN 55402
612-344-1027
mailto:rstauffer@bluefirepartners.com
http://www.bluefirepartners.com/