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JerryFish
Staff

A Cringeworthy Statistic Statement: #3 in a series

 

JerryFish_0-1637073745165.png

Welcome back for the third Cringeworthy discussion topic!  Many thanks to those that contributed to the first two topics.  Please feel free to join this discussion as well!

 

Today's Cringeworthy Statement should be obvious, though you all have surprised me with great insights in the past that I hadn't considered!  Here it is:

 

An engineer is tasked with running a test on a particular process output.  The goal is to learn about the average performance of the process.  The engineer decides to measure the process output three times.

 

After completing the test, the engineer reports the following in a stakeholder meeting:

 

"The process output is 11.327384, based on averaging 3 independent measurements."

 

What is cringeworthy about this statement?

 

#cringeworthy #measurements #msa

11 REPLIES 11

Re: A Cringeworthy Statistic Statement: #3 in a series

Would be better if the engineer plotted the data in Graph Builder.  That way they would have been forced to show the "spread" (visually) and likely would have defined the units (since their axes would need to be labeled for the graph to make any sense).  The exercise would have probably have triggered them to put some limit(s) on the graph that are of practical importance, such as process control limits or specification limits. Go Graph Builder! 

Re: A Cringeworthy Statistic Statement: #3 in a series

Hello
As a beginner i will ask:
- what units are define
- how samples were taken : 3 one after one or 3 with some break time beetween
- why 3?
- what is assumed power of the test?
- what are the CI ?
- what is std of the sample.?
- is this response important to the process
- was the measurment system defined as accurate (GRR)?
- what is a distribution of data?
This for start
Pawel