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Practical Statistical Problem Solving Using Minitab to Explore the Problem
By Matthew Barsalou, guest bloggerA problem must be understood before it can be properly addressed. A thorough understanding of the problem is critical when performing a root cause analysis (RCA) and...
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Capability Quandaries Exposed
Don't be a grumpy cat when something on your capability report doesn't smell right. After pressing that OK button to run your analysis, allow your inner cat to understand how and why certain statistics...
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Big Ten 4th Down Calculator: Week 7
Going into Saturday, Nebraska was 0-5 in games decided by 7 points or less and Michigan State was 4-0 in games decided by 7 points or less. You'll often hear sports analysts use this as proof that one...
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Terry Bradshaw Might be the Best Super Bowl Quarterback Ever
Last time I touched on the subject of the greatest Super Bowl quarterback, I promised a multivariate analysis considering several different statistics. Let’s get right to a factor analysis. Getting...
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Control Charts - Not Just for Statistical Process Control (SPC) Anymore!
Control charts are a fantastic tool. These charts plot your process data to identify common cause and special cause variation. By identifying the different causes of variation, you can take action on...
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So Why Is It Called "Regression," Anyway?
Did you ever wonder why statistical analyses and concepts often have such weird, cryptic names?One conspiracy theory points to the workings of a secret committee called the ICSSNN. The International...
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Big Ten 4th Down Calculator: Week 8
We use statistics to arm ourselves with more information. That information allows us to make more informed decisions. And the sooner we can obtain this information, the better.For example, suppose one...
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Approaching the Food Waste Problem with Lean Six Sigma and Statistics
According to this article published on Food Tank, over 22 million pounds of food is wasted on college campuses each year. Now that’s a lot of food waste!Students all over the country are noticing...
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What Is ANOVA? And Who Drinks the Most Beer?
Back when I was an undergrad in statistics, I unfortunately spent an entire semester of my life taking a class, diligently crunching numbers with my TI-82, before realizing 1) that I was actually in an...
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Survival Analysis and Zombies
Reliability and survival analysis is used most frequently in manufacturing. Companies use these methods to estimate the proportion of units that will fail within, or survive beyond, a given period of...
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Big Ten 4th Down Calculator: Week 9
This past weekend in the Big Ten showed how being conservative on 4th down decisions can cost you a game. Ohio State punted on 4th and 1 three different times, while Penn State and Illinois both kicked...
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Giving Statistically Significant Thanks
This week is the annual Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, a period where we are encouraged to eat turkey and cranberries, then consider the blessings in our lives before falling into a...
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A Simple Guide to Between / Within capability
Having delivered training courses on capability analyses with Minitab, several times, I have noticed that one question you can be absolutely sure will be asked, during the course, is: What is the...
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Statistics Has Become Famous, and Aren't We Lucky
‘Statistics’ is a rising star. Everywhere I turn, people are talking about data and the value of being able to analyze and act on it. As someone who’s been writing about that for years, I say it’s...
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Big Ten 4th Down Calculator: Week 10
There was a lot at stake in the final week of Big Ten play this week. Three different games had an impact on not only the Big Ten Championship Game, but the College Football playoff as well....
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What Can You Say When Your P-Value is Greater Than 0.05?
Regardless of where you fall in the ongoing debate about the validity of p-values—which I will not rehash here since my colleague Jim Frost has detailed the issues involved at some length—the fact...
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Why You Should Use Non-parametric Tests when Analyzing Data with Outliers
There are many reasons why a distribution might not be normal/Gaussian. A non-normal pattern might be caused by several distributions being mixed together, or by a drift in time, or by one or several...
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Big Ten 4th Down Calculator: Championship Edition
The College Football Playoff technically doesn't start until December 31st, but in reality it started Saturday night in Indianapolis. The winner of the Big Ten Championship Game was in the playoff,...
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Factor Analysis and the Best Super Bowl Quarterback Ever
Last time, we used factor analysis to come up with factors we could use to describe the performances of Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks. Now, we’ll try to use those factors to compare the performance...
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Why Are P Value Misunderstandings So Common?
I’ve written a fair bit about P values: how to correctly interpret P values, a graphical representation of how they work, guidelines for using P values, and why the P value ban in one journal is a...
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