新經濟學與台灣戴明圈: The New Economics and A Taiwanese Deming Circle

高禩瑾先生

2012-01-26T18:49:00.000-08:00

我周日回東海網站看

由於標題都用紅色可讀性差

趕緊研究紐約時報和經濟學人的網站

了解我的想法是否有根據

我又去 Wikipedia 的”台灣的東海大學” 現在似乎官方資料很多

不過該改進的地方仍不少

譬如說姊妹學校應全列出這是禮貌 (我是”留英”的我們的英國姊妹校我都很生疏我真孤陋寡聞)

***** 我很謝謝沈金標先生給我下信的回信

阿標
近日想到校友會的網站可能可以充實的地方
提供你們參考

建言留版等格式太小太舊---可否增大/又可超聯結
另外應該考慮加作友情留言版 目前學校提供各年級的blog 還是問題很多

譬如說我如果知道徐錚游思俊等1973級學長的emails

想多跟他們聯絡譬如說他們回國時安排高禩瑾院長的講座 (我2008年請Bill Scherkenbach 回校演講2次並出一本三百多頁的書)

另外類似 Wikipedia 的”東海校友” 內容很貧乏應多補充

反過來說 Wikipedia 提供免費的 Wiki 軟體東海校友似乎應該從頭自建一個

謝謝你們的服務

我支持你向家醜放砲我想我們過去30-40年太客氣了

不過有時候說錯了如以前程校長的求職等事該向校長"抱歉" (我輩臉皮算什麼)...

再謝

(暫定)

高禩瑾，字仲瑜，1904-19 。山東膠縣人

美國普渡大學機械工程學系畢業，美國伊利諾大學機械工程碩士。資源委員會(訓令)技正（1943.5）、科長、資源委員會資蜀鋼鐵廠廠長（1944-1946）*、經濟部台灣區特派員辦公室機械接收委員會主任委員、台灣機械造船公司協理、總經理（1946.5-1948.4）、台灣機械公司總經理（1948.4-1955.5）、台灣區生產事業管理委員會委員、行政院經濟安定委員會工業委員會一般工業組專門委員、財團法人中國生產力總經理（1955-1967；1968-1971.1）兼副董事長（1955-1967）、財團法人金屬工業發展中心董事長（1963.10-1964.10）、東海大學工業工程系主任（1966-1967）、東海大學工學院院長（1971.2-1973）、東海大學環境科學研究中心主任（1972-）。

【取材自 李國鼎:我的台灣經驗，台北: 遠流，2005，p. 644】
*根據 李國鼎:我的台灣經驗，p.47 高先生可能是李先生的"長官"或同事

最近作高先生劉老師之邊緣傳記，或許可以用陸游的說法：

「儲淚一升悲世事，減愁三尺看君書。」

「儲淚一升悲世事」指高禩瑾先生的產業輩份高於李國鼎資政，不過台灣全國、各組織（CPC和東海及其個人）毫無史識。「盡成灰之青史」顯示，高先生完全默默無聞—這是「官」vs 「產學」之幸與不幸---「公乃工廠、產業、學界之開拓者，素未參與國政。」

「減愁三尺看君書」指劉振老師致漢清同學 (三通 1980 s)。

懷念師長：高禩瑾院長

在Deming博士簡歷的國際活動（International Activities）中，http://deming.org/index.cfm?content=61 台灣記有一筆：Consultant to the China Productivity Center, Taiwan, 1970, 1971

當然，那時的China Productivity Center, Taiwan（；CPC）的主政者是高先生。

他是見過大世面的人，1954年擔任中國機械工程學會理事長（第二屆）……。現在網路上還可以找到這樣的說法：「…….在1960年代初期，「中國生產力及貿易中心」(1968/7-1970/7) 總經理高禩瑾有感於一國的工業，最後都要經過「工業設計」這一關，才能和國外……. 」這只是該單位的業績中的一項小小「提倡之功」，對於將現代管理引進台灣之功是不可沒的。

高禩瑾先生或許可以稱為 台灣的工業工程之父。我們沒人能為高先生立一比較完整傳記，深覺遺憾。

我大學管理學的啟蒙老師是高禩瑾院長。他大二（1972-73）教我們「工業管理」。他在課堂中問「決策學派Herbert A. Simon」，我能回答；他經常指定的課外研習教材多取自 Harvard Business Review文章和哈佛大學商學院的個案分析。在管理學領域，高先生和稍後的陳勝年先生對於台灣教育界都有其貢獻。

他的許多舊部屬，都是我的兼課師長，譬如說教品質管制的劉振，教實驗計劃的吳玉印，教工模夾具設計的徐先生…….我當時覺得，台灣的生產力中心的顧問團隊，以及美國史丹佛大學某些教授的著作，對早期台灣工業工程教育的影響相當大。

我聽過一場改變志向，決心走向工業界的演講，是他請趙鐵頭來講中鋼創辦史的感人故事……這是我的一次難忘體驗：我很少聽演講。這輩子印象最深刻的演講是：我1970年代初，上高禩瑾先生的工業管理學課程，他講的，都是很正統的美國企業管理知識。實務方面，高先生會請他的舊部屬來演講，如中鋼公司負責人趙耀東先生（他後當過經濟部長）的故事，最感人。他演講的一些具體內容，可參考雷穎《造化遊戲四十年：雷穎回憶錄》，（台北：中央研究院近代史研究所，民國88年（1999），頁175-80）。當然，最重要的是「趙鐵頭」親身說法，他很有說偉大英雄故事的魅力，讓年青人嚮往萬分。（現在，第一代中鋼員工多快退休了……2008年八月初還傳出新進員工考試作弊之醜聞）。高院長又請各行業界領導來演講「台灣的產業問題」，……. 敬悼趙耀東先生

畢業十幾年之後，我還可以聽到中原大學王晃三老師對他的敬佩。他為大四學生創辦的「台灣工業問題研討會」課程，乃是中原等校課程設計的重要參考。

他離開東海的時候，我（們）親自到他院長宿舍，幫他整理東西送回台北。他以近乎聊天的口氣對我（們）說，以後，如果要留學美國，申請學校時，可不必為那些名校之令譽所迷惑，你們應該找的學校，是自己最能受益的……

我還記得他約在1973接國科會一研究案子，探討台灣對工業工程人才需求之預測……我認為，他的最大貢獻是成立「東海大學環境科學研究中心主任」(1972)，探討環境問題…..

高禩謹《台灣工業工程教育興起之研究》，張淑英譯，台中：東海大學環境研究中心，1975

原文為英文

A Study On Industrial Engineering Education Emerging In Taiwan by Prof. Si-Chin Kao, Environmental Research Center, Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan, The Republic of China, 1975

(Restricted Circulation 請勿輕予流傳)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction 1

II. Summary and Recommendations 9

III. Present Status of I. E. Education in Taiwan 18

IV. Assessment of Demand and Supply of Industrial Engineering 33

V. The Role of I. E. Education in Industrialization 40

Appendix I. A Sample of Questionnaire 52

Appendix II. Name List of Persons Interviewed 56

後來，知道他在美國過世，「品質管制月刊」登些懷念斯人之文，多不深入。品管學會的林秘書還到他的故居，取回許多他遺贈的英文書籍雜誌，其中有一些很難得的Harvard Business Review，因為台灣很少有這樣早的刊號。可惜很少人問津。

吳玉印老師曾對我說過，高先生組團出國考察時，相當活潑。

2008年9月初補胡適（1891～1962）先生《嘗試集》中的〈樂觀篇〉:

這株大樹很可惡，

他礙著我的路！

來！快把他砍倒了，

把樹根也掘去，哈哈！好了！

大樹被斫做柴燒，

樹根不久也爛完了。

斫樹的人很得意，

他覺得很平安了。

但是那樹還有許多種子！

很小的種子，裹在有刺的殼兒裡！-----

上面蓋著枯葉，

葉上堆著白雪，

很小的東西，誰也不注意。

雪消了，

枯葉被春風吹跑了。

那有刺的殼都裂開了，

每個上面長出兩瓣嫩葉，

笑眯眯的好像是說：

「我們又來了！」

過了許多年，

壩上田邊，都是大樹了。

辛苦的工人在樹下乘涼，

聰明的小鳥在樹上歌唱，-----

那砍樹的人到那裡去了？

（八年九月二十 1919）

*高禩瑾先生的名字小記

我學的中文輸入一直無法打他的全名，昨天問陳寬仁老師，才知道：「高祀瑾院長其中間的祀字就是祭祀的祀他名字用的是古寫，可在Word的『符號』中衣部找到。」

我除了向他說「感謝萬分！」之外，也請張瑞麟兄幫忙查教育部辭典：「「禩」為「祀」之異體。《龍龕手鑑．部》：「祀，或作禩。」《玉篇．示部》：「禩，同祀。」《字彙．示部》同。
按：「禩」據《說文》所載，為「祀」之或文。段玉裁注《說文》「祀」篆云：「古文巳聲、異聲同在一部，故異形而同字也。」今考《說文》但云「禩，祀或從異。」未云「異」聲，據段氏所考，則知「禩」當為「從示異聲」之形聲字。」

瑾、瑜皆為美玉。懷瑾握瑜比喻懷有高貴的美德與才能。楚辭˙屈原˙九章˙懷沙：「懷瑾握瑜兮，窮不知所示。」梁書˙卷五十五˙豫章王綜傳：「懷瑾握瑜空擲去，攀松折桂誰相許。」

著作

《自由中國之工作簡化》高禩瑾等撰，臺北: 中國生產力及貿易中心,，1962。

晚年代表作為：「工業工程的歷史與進步發展」載於. 《工業工程全書》.pp. 1-49.，.台北:中興管理顧問公司，1981，pp.1-49.

從簡單化標準化專業化增加生產力高禩瑾主編蕭如淮譯述
臺北：中國生產力中心，1957

美國大學企業管理教育考察報告本中心總經理高禩瑾赴美考察報告之二高禩瑾撰高禩瑾
臺北：中國生產力及貿易中心，1960

對越貿易參考資料高禩瑾主編
台北：中國生產力及貿易中心，1962

香港某大學圖書館，竟然有一本「物料管理」之資料：(Title Wu liao guan li. )，Author: Gao, Yijin. 高禩瑾，台北 : 中國生產力及貿易中心, 1962. Publisher Taibei : Zhongguo sheng chan li ji mao yi zhong xin, 1962. ，Edition 3 ban. 3版.。

高禩瑾撰《展望第六期四年經濟劃》，1973。

毋忘斯人(施政楷) 品管月刊 -- 見劉振老師編『施政楷先生品質管制遺作選集』（台北；

中華民國民國品質管制學會，1983年）

高禩瑾編;

系統化的管理( Management: a system approach) [柯立楠]David I.Cleland,[金恩]William R.King合著 ; 陳擇賢譯，高禩瑾校

哈佛企管評論名著精選，許是祥譯，高禩瑾校

傳承與開創東海工工創系四十年 (1963-2003 )1999年成立博士班。2001年更名為-東海工業工程與經營資訊學系…。

高禩瑾與東海大學工業工程系：在1965-67 為兼任教師、1970-79為專任教師---取材自：「1963-1999年工工系專任教師名冊」【傳承與開創：東海工工創系四十年 (1963-2003 )】

高禩謹先生的話: “中國的讀書人在傳統上都有一種抱負:那就是 “經國濟世” 他們讀書不是為謀生更不是為發財而是為實現宏願

收高禩瑾先生兩篇文章 (pp.11-14 )
"台灣工業的成就和現在面臨的幾個問題" (1967 年2月1日東海月會演講)

“經國濟世” (工業工程第17期 1974年1月 ---原標題 "院長的話")

“任重道遠前途無量” (工業工程第20期題辭)

宣傳方式/Returns of the dragon

2012-01-24T00:21:00.000-08:00

《格言集》利希滕貝格

利希滕貝格《格言集》在中國有數家出版社的版本:遼寧教育或譯林

它的妙是古今道理相同
如148頁指出 1789年第8期的墨邱利The London Mercury強調其訂戶的尊貴 (其財產總值為4千萬英鎊) 這正如1990年代初期 The Economist 用Bill Gates 的讚揚當其廣告
Dr. Deming 的學生說他1950年的箱根演講的聽的公司值是日本的3/4.......

Returns of the dragon

Jan 23rd 2012, 13:15 by The Economist online

This Chinese new year could bring good fortune to stockmarket investors

CHINESE people across the world ushered in their new year on January 23rd, which according to 3,000 year-old Chinese astrology is the year of the dragon. This critter is not a mythical beast. Physignathus cocincinus, to give its Latin name, is associated with power, authority and good fortune. For those looking for good news among the grim January headlines, this could bode well for stockmarket fortunes over the coming year. Between 1900 and 2011, the nine previous dragon years have seen America's Dow Jones Industrial Average price index increase by an average of 7.7% in real terms, the second-best historical record of the 12 zodiac animals. Such fortune may be short-lived however; next year's animal, the snake, has the second-worst historical record.

復習W. Edwards Deming名言Out of the crisis /Fourteen Points and Seven Deadly Diseases of Management

2012-01-19T05:10:00.001-08:00

復習名言

As W. Edwards Deming once said, “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” I

W. Edwards Deming "14 Points" express Deming's philosophy of management: specifically, they break down the need for a working understanding of basic quality management system statistical principles. In addition to Deming's 14 points, he also outlined Seven Deadly Diseases, which describe the most serious barriers that management potentially faces within an organization. Outlined below are his Seven Deadly Diseases of Management, as well as an explanation of each.

1. Lack of constancy of purpose to plan product and service that will have a market and keep the company in business, and provide jobs.

As long as the focus is on short term thinking, management will fail to plan adequately. Without good long term planning, worker efforts will be irrelevant: Total Quality Management (TQM) cannot be a fad, as long-term forward progress should always be the ultimate goal for any organization.

2. Emphasis on short-term profits.

Short-term thinking - the opposite of constancy of purpose - in order to stay in business, fed by fear of the push from bankers and owners for dividends. Boosting short-term profits is easier, at it typically involves the cutting of any expense related to the long term: training, quality assurance management, maintenance, etc.

3. Personal review systems, or evaluation of performance, merit rating, annual review, etc. for people in management, the effects of which are devastating.

Management by objective, on a go / no-go basis, without a method for accomplishment of the objective, is the same thing as management by fear. The essential problem with merit systems is that they reward results rather than process improvement—results will almost always have a lot of system luck mixed in. Some managers want to reward people who cooperate more or who seem to have better attitudes, and will insist that they can recognize the people who are most cooperative and have the highest work ethic. Instead, managers should understand that the best way to develop cooperation is by focusing on the nature of work environment, not monetary rewards.

4. Mobility of management: job-hopping

The simplest and yet one of the most deadly of quality systems management diseases, management mobility (or when top management changes organizations every 3-4 years) means continuous improvement efforts will be broken and disjointed as new leaders come on board. With changes in leadership, there is a change in management philosophy. Managers who have an eye on the next promotion want results - now - to gain the next rung on the ladder.

5. Use of visible figures only for management, with little or no consideration of figures that are unknown or unknowable. Some facts are simply unknowable. Knowing this, Deming insisted that leaders must still make decisions and manage a situation. This leads to a basic dilemma—how do you know what would have happened if you had kept on your prior course?

How do you put a dollar value on the customer loyalty won through quality improvement efforts?

You can't, because these numbers are unknowable—and this must be taken into consideration.

6. Excessive medical costs.

For the economy as a whole, health care as a percentage of overall expenditures has steadily risen for decades, which gradually pushes numerous businesses into a state of crisis. Potentially the only remedy for this disease would be a political system attempting to reform health care.

7. Excessive costs of liability.

W. Edwards Deming blamed America's lawyers in part for the problems of American business. The US has more lawyers per capita than any other country in the world, and they spend much of their professional time finding people to sue. Like health care costs in No. 6, Deming believed the remedy to this disease will probably have to come from the government.

Source: W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points and Seven Deadly Diseases of Management

Out of the crisis - lessons from British car manufacturing
The Birmingham Post
... were taught by two American statisticians who went there to assist in post-war development of industry Dr. W. Edwards Deming and Dr. Joseph Juran. ...

Out of the crisis - lessons from British car manufacturing

By Dr Steven McCabe on Jan 18, 12 09:53 AM in Automotive

Today's unemployment figures give us all cause for concern and there is certainly little to be currently optimistic about. For those of us who have been around for a while and can remember the 1970s we know that even in the bleakest of times there is always hope of change. The trouble is, there is a great deal to fear. Our economy is 'flat-lining' and the historically low period of phenomenally low interest rates has simply kept things from getting worse. We can only hope that events in Greece do not lead to another spectacular crisis of finance which will impact on all of us and, of course, make recovery even harder.

So, what can realistically be done to create the success our economy desperately needs to achieve an export-led recovery? Surprisingly we can look for inspiration to a sector once written off as displaying all of the characteristics that seemed to epitomise everything that was wrong with British industry. Once again we are back to the 1970s when car manufacturing, or the frequent lack of, regularly made the news headlines.

British car manufacturing has a rich tradition. When I was a child in the 1970s every household in Birmingham knew or was related to someone who worked at factories making components or in the huge assembly plants such as at the Austin plant in Longbridge where my dad worked in the foundry. For many of my class mates working in the car industry was a reasonable, if somewhat unexciting, prospect. Sadly, though, it was not a sector that inspired pride. Indeed, for a great many it generated feelings of contempt at what many saw as the worst of industrial relations. For others it was like witnessing the protracted illness of a once-loved relative. Longbridge was symbolic of just how bad things had become; lack of investment made the factory look archaic and the ability of management and workers to see eye-to-eye was, at best, difficult because of shop stewards whose objective seemed to be anarchy. Longbridge seemed to be a factory that was literally 'out of control'.

As history was to demonstrate, despite the valiant efforts of workers and some management (but certainly not the "Phoenix Four"), it was not possible to ensure that mass car production could continue at Longbridge. Nonetheless, there was a recognition that if you wish to remain successful as a car producer you need to learn what the Japanese had shown was possible; that you can make cars which customers perceive to have 'quality' and will perform to extremely high standards.

Everyone who has studied Japanese production learned that they place great importance on constant innovation and development, obsession with quality control and, crucially, the value of putting people at the heart of the production system. Every student who learns the history of how Japanese car producers achieved pre-eminence will discover the irony that these principles were taught by two American statisticians who went there to assist in post-war development of industry Dr. W. Edwards Deming and Dr. Joseph Juran. The title of this blog is in homage to Deming whose seminal book Out of the Crisis, published in 1982, stressed the need for America industry to learn what he had taught the Japanese thirty five years earlier.

The fact that domestic car sales are declining is no surprise. The current climate makes us fearful of what the immediate future holds. However, other economies are doing much better. The 'BRIC' economies are well known (Brazil, Russia, India and China). More recently there is the emergence of what are referred to as the 'CIVETS' (Columbia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa). These provide opportunities for those manufacturers able to produce goods, such as cars, which are seen to be high value and data shows that this is the case for large volume producers and the luxury marques such as Bentley and Jaguar.

It is notable that all top five car producers in Britain have ownership outside of this country; BMW (who produce the Mini in Cowley), Land Rover, Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Significantly the owners of these companies, as well as the other smaller luxury produces, explicitly recognise that whilst they cannot compete in terms of unit costs, if the product is perceived to be superior by being designed and assembled by highly skilled and committed workers, it is perfectly possible to not just survive the current problems but to prosper.

So what is needed? As an academic based at Birmingham City University I make no apology for stressing the importance of education at every level. The children we are teaching today need the skills and confidence in their ability to be part of quest for innovation and creativity which will be essential in the future. We need our business and political leaders to continuously hammer home the message that our manufacturers can be the best in the world. But manufacturers must be supported in every way possible. If we can spend umpteen billions on a new railway line then we can surely invest in research and development and provide financial incentives to encourage the brightest and best to be part of the manufacturing revolution. This is what will get us out of recession; whatever happens elsewhere.

感謝 Thanks

2012-01-14T22:03:00.000-08:00

感謝
謝謝高雄華泰電子集團的王金秋總經理（華信資訊開發公司）的葡萄.....

鳳山張恩誠先生

我已經收到書了，也感謝您多送我一本書！

請朋友下兩書暫時不要下訂單:忠樸先生『實驗設計速學法』/戴明領導手冊

近2年新書


11	978-957-28176-4-3	臺灣戴明圈: 東海戴明學者講座. 2008年	W. Edwards Deming, William W. Scherkenbach原著; 劉振, 鍾漢清譯	9710	初版
12	978-957-28176-5-0	轉型紀念戴明博士. 2009年: 統計品管可靠性與轉型的新經濟學	鍾漢清等原著	9810	初版
13	978-957-28176-6-7	戴明博士文選: 統計品管到淵博知識	戴明原著; 鍾漢清, 劉振翻譯	9810	初版

系統與變異: 淵博知識與理想設計法 (2010)

13)左營穎昌特殊印刷第4代管理數本
12) 義守大學圖書館

11) 感謝潘水生先生購第四代管理

10) 感謝陳一民先生書一批

9) 2010的出書和研討會感謝徐歷昌先生和華致資訊的王金秋總經理的幫助以及吳國精蘇錦坤等等老友的鼓勵支持......詳見感謝狀

8)找到楊淑華博士的地址謝謝2001的訂閱

7) 忘記問她大陸老闆名字的顧客

6) 員林楊建平先生一批
5) 太空梭高傳真資訊科技股份有限公司" 羅輝隆總經理鄭經理大批訂單

4) 寂天出版公司周老板
3) 張哲維先生書一冊

(1)連毅針織實業股份有限公司一批

(2) 高雄廖成偉君訂書一批

****
忘不了的人和事
才是真生命--- 齊邦媛《巨流河》p. 433

感謝謝立沛老師贈書一批/214
*****

Dear Justing,

感謝你的韓國巨梨甚甜美我們3人 (巨擘和Sean)分吃一個就半飽

*******

Daniel_Wang協助做 Bill Scherkenbach 演講影片英文字幕

****
toc 專家黃運金博士書一批

***

張智翔

川瀨健一先生贈台灣1938-48年上映之電影之目錄

華致資訊開發公司總經理王金邱先生

Justing

---

周女士MODELS OF MY LIFE

----

昆山科技大學
工程學院機械系陳長仁老師朱紹書老師
購第四代管理一批

****
老徐(文杰兄) 稍微進去電子所二十周年一書 search使用起來不方便
似乎可見建議以後一齊收入 googlebooks 等方便全文檢索
我有興趣的似乎不多不過這是"正史"

你下次順道來我有新書送你
今年會再出書其中會感謝你十多年前為我找的一篇論文
::::
蘇小姐 (ASUS ) PC已收到謝謝我利用快遞回送之服務送你兩本書不成敬意請笑納
****
杜宗附,訂3本"戴明博士四日談"

****
Peter送普爾新茶
許達然老師送新地文學
黃先生送止舞集

Dear 鍾老師：

今天(4/25)下午，我從高雄縣三民鄉探密回程，

因該鄉現在盛產水蜜桃，所以給您及陳教授各帶了一份，也在傍晚以宅急便送出，統一寄到陳教授家，預計明天傍晚送達，由他轉傳予您。

但因為沒有掌握到陳教授出國的訊息，經聯絡是陳師母接的電話，陳師母她表示明天一整天都不在，約晚間10點才回家。所以我有把您的電話(23650127、23625776)給她，她表示接到後會給您電話聯繫。

隨後我撥電話給您，因是電話錄音，所以趕緊寫信給您，希望您沒出國。附上陳教授家的電話 2733****，要勞煩您與陳師母聯絡。

真的很抱歉，原本想讓您和陳教授歡喜的事，卻因為我的疏忽，搞得勞師動眾。也希望您和陳教授會喜歡當令的土產。

張智翔敬上

*****

聯華食品林政文先生感謝你購書

我查一下 "朱蘭質量手冊" 定價竟然已是599元人民幣台北師大路的問津堂有現貨如果沒貴賓卡換成台幣要乘4.6

這很出乎我的意外所以我查一下網路

作　　者： [美]约瑟夫·M·朱兰，A·布兰顿·戈弗雷著，焦叔斌等译

出版社：中国人民大学出版社

出版时间： 2003-11-1 　次： 1
页　　数： 1723
I S B N ： 9787300050584
包　　装：精装

定价：￥298.00 当当价：￥258.70 折扣：87 折节省：￥39.30 钻石vip价：￥245.80
換句話說竟然加倍了所以我建議你網路買書看能不能買到舊價書

萬一不成我再幫你買

--
鍾漢清
Hanching Chung (or HC/ hc)
網址：http://www.deming.com.tw
台灣戴明圈: A Taiwanese Deming Circle
http://demingcircle.blogspot.com/
地址：台北市新生南路三段88號2樓
電話：（02）23625776 23650127
轉形任重道遠必須窮數十寒暑
"When we size up the job ahead, it is obvious that a long thorny road lies ahead -- decades."
Dependence on protection by tariffs and laws to "buy American" only encourages incompetence.
It would be incorrect to leave the reader with the impression that no action is taking place.
(Deming, 1986, Preface for Out of the Crisis)
*****
購買戴明領導手冊 *4 本
加上一本戴明博士四日談
奇美電子三廠/ 顏太禹

復盛公司詹勳峰戴明書籍一批

新竹蕭永靖先生購書

黃世忠先生贈 ISO 9001:2008版實務與驗證指引 一書

賴丹桂女士贈CNS 標準

Justing 送的餅乾

賴丹桂女士買書一批

熊維強戴明博士四日談五本
贈我 "聖依納爵神操" (The Spiritual Excercises of St. Ignatitus) 台北:光啟文化事業 1978/2003 三版

高雄市楠梓區楠梓加工出口區 infolab ( 王金秋收 )

鍾老師,

在現在的時機看到這本書,真的很高興, 想加購 5 本與朋友分享。
謝謝您 !

Regards,
Daniel

----

Dear HC,,

書已收到並轉交蔽公司許特助他交給我1000元多的部份就算贊助您的知識傳講事業

Best rgds
DHsu

***
友達光電(股)公司鍾心毓/ Aries Chang
訂購

訂購書籍：戴明博士四日談

訂購數量：50本x $300/本= $15,000

訂購日：2008/09/22
*****
奇美電子 x1642 李小姐戴明領導手冊6本

感謝衡美企業（Dynasty Design）老闆和 Sophia Katsu購買一整套 Deming 叢書

a student of W. Edwards Deming

2012-01-02T19:33:00.000-08:00

Assessing quality
SDTimes.com
Any serious study of quality work must include appreciation of the work of W. Edwards Deming, a statistician who studied management methods for maximizing ...

Gingrich, under the weather, on gasohol, dogs and amateur paleontology
Capital New York
He also has a music-education video out with his wife, Callista, and is an amateur paleontologist and is a student of W. Edwards Deming, from whom he once ...

E10, sometimes called gasohol,乙醇汽油 is a fuel mixture of 10% anhydrous ethanol and 90% gasoline that can be used in the internal combustion engines of most ...

paleontology - 古生物學Paleontology - Wikipedia,

Change comes to a paper
Albany Times Union
The brilliant management guru W. Edwards Deming, whose teachings in the mid-20th century revolutionized the way businesses worldwide pursued success, ...

In love as in equities, we are regularly fooled by randomness

2011-12-29T22:00:00.001-08:00

2011年12月30日 07:18 AM
小心被隨機性欺騙
In love as in equities, we are regularly fooled by randomness
英國《金融時報》專欄作家約翰•凱

As the year ends, the author of a weekly column should look back and acknowledge the things he got wrong. I made at least one serious mistake. I wrote that if men think about sex on average every seven seconds, the average man last thought about sex three and a half seconds ago. I should have consulted the poet Wendy Cope, who wrote that: “Bloody men are like bloody buses – / You wait for about a year / And as soon as one approaches your stop / Two or three others appear”.

到了年底，每週發表一篇文章的專欄作家應當回顧這一年，承認自己的文章在哪些地方出過錯誤。我就至少出過一次嚴重的錯誤。我曾寫道，如果男人平均每7秒就想到一次性，那麼男人上一次想到性平均是在3.5秒之前（請見FT中文網2011年9月1日文章《統計數據的誤區》——譯者注）。我本該就此徵詢一下詩人溫迪•可普(Wendy Cope)的意見，因為她曾寫過：“死男人們就像那些可惡的公交車，你一等就得等上將近一年，剛有一輛車靠站，其它幾輛就接二連三地來了。”

Her analogy is helpful. If a bus arrives at fixed intervals of seven minutes, you will wait an average of three and a half minutes. But, as Ms Cope knows all too well, the interval is unpredictable: two buses come at once and then there is a lengthy wait for the next one. The average frequency of the bus may still be seven minutes. But if the intervals are alternately zero and 14 minutes the expected wait is now seven minutes, not three and a half. If someone is standing at a bus stop, it is more likely that they are victim of a bus which is late than the beneficiary of one that is early.

她的類比很有幫助。如果公交車到站的時間間隔是固定的，比如7分鐘，那你平均需要等上3.5分鐘。但實際的時間間隔是無法預知的，可普對這一點了解得很清楚：如果同時來了兩輛車，那麼下一輛就得等上很長時間。公交車到站的平均頻率或許仍是每7分鐘一輛，但如果時間間隔變成了要么是0分鐘要么是14分鐘，那麼預期等待時間就變成了7分鐘、而不是3.5分鐘。如果有人現在正站在公交站等車，那麼他們更有可能是要倒霉地去等一輛晚到的公交車，而不是幸運地趕上一輛早到的公交車。

You may think this does not matter very much. But this summer the UK business secretary Vince Cable asked me to devote an entire year to thinking about equity markets. I discovered that the arithmetic of thinking about share values is the same as the arithmetic of thinking about sex. The average length of time for which buyers hold shares today is very short. But the average length of time for which shares have been held by their current owner is much longer. There are many more high frequency trades than passive investors, but passive investors hold a high proportion of outstanding shares.

你可能會覺得這件事並沒有那麼重要。但今年夏天，英國商務大臣文斯•凱布爾(Vince Cable)讓我花一整年的時間對股票市場做些思考，結果我發現，股票價值思考所適用的計算，與性思考所適用的計算是相同的。現在買股票的人的平均持股時間是很短的，但股票在其當前持有者手中停留的平均時間卻長得多。高頻交易的交易量遠比被動投資者的交易量大得多，但被動投資者所持股票在已發行股票中佔很大比例。

The people queuing for a bus are the people whose bus has not arrived, and the people on yachts are those whose boat came in. What we see will always be influenced by the ways in which the sample studied is selected. The traders we interview are mostly successful because mostly it is the successful who are still trading – and this past success may be no guide to future performance. As the essayist Nassim Taleb has observed, we are regularly fooled by randomness, identifying skill where there was only luck, finding patterns in data when none really exist.

排隊在那兒等公交車的，是還沒等到公交車的人。坐在遊艇上的，則是已買到遊艇的人。我們觀察到的現象，永遠都會受研究樣本選擇方式的影響。我們採訪的交易員大多是成功的，因為大多數情況下，仍在從事交易的人正是那些成功者——但過去的成功並不構成未來表現的指引。正如作家納西姆•塔勒布(Nassim Taleb)觀察到的，我們經常被隨機性所欺騙，在那些只由運氣決定的情況中尋找技巧，在實際上毫無規律的數據中尋找規律。

The sometimes counter-intuitive mathematics of variation crops up in many different places. If Persil is sometimes on special offer, the percentage increase when it goes back to its usual price will be larger than the percentage price reduction when it goes on special. If that seems an unremarkable fact, it was enough to send several hundred thousand government employees on strike a month ago.

有時候，這種與直覺認識相反的、關於“變動”的數學運算也出現在其它地方。如果寶瑩(Persil)洗滌劑偶爾進行一次特價促銷，那麼從特價恢復為原價時價格上漲的百分比，會高於從原價降為特價時價格下跌的百分比。儘管這個事實看似再正常不過，但它卻足以讓數十萬政府工作人員在上月舉行罷工了。

The average of price changes shows an increase even though the price has remained the same. And perhaps you buy more, perhaps even spend more, when the item is on offer than when it is at full price. After all, that is why they put it on special. These issues pose problems for compilers of price indices, and there are different methods of handling them. That is the principal reason why the new European harmonised index of consumer prices generally increases by less than the old retail prices index. The UK chancellor George Osborne is planning to make large savings in public expenditure by shifting pension indexation from one basis to the other.

儘管整個促銷過程結束後價格實際上與原來完全相同，但價格變幅的平均值卻顯示價格出現上漲。當商品處於促銷時，你的購買量甚至購買額很可能會比商品處於原價時要多。畢竟，商家特價促銷的目的就在於此。這些情況給價格指數的編制者造成了麻煩。我們可用多種方法來解決這些麻煩。歐洲新的“消費價格調和指數”(HICP)通常比原先的零售價格指數(RPI)漲幅更小，其主要原因也在於此。英國財政大臣喬治•奧斯本(George Osborne)正打算將編制養老金指數所基的指數從RPI換為HICP，以節省巨額公共開支。

The same problem arises in measuring benchmarks and portfolio performance in equity markets. If you average a 50 per cent fall and a 100 per cent increase, you show a 25 per cent gain. But if that happened to your shares, you would – just – have recouped your initial investment. Neither method of calculation is necessarily a guarantee to the experience of real investors.

在衡量股市基準和投資組合表現時，也會產生相同的問題。將50%的跌幅和100%的漲幅相平均，得到的結果是上漲了25%。但如果這種情況發生在你的股票上，那你就只是收回初始投資而已。這兩種計算方法得出的結果，都未必與投資者在現實中的感受相符。

I may have made another mistake in my earlier column. Since it appeared, details have been published of a study by researchers at Ohio State University. They surveyed college students – who, one might expect, think about sex more often than the average of the population. The subjects were asked to make a note each time the topic entered their heads. Men thought about sex, on average, 19 times a day (the figure for women was only 10). Does this mean that we should correct “every seven seconds” to “on average, once every waking hour”? Only if men think about sex at absolutely regular intervals. And neither love nor equity markets are so predictable.

在先前的專欄文章中，我可能還出過另一個錯誤。那篇文章發表後，俄亥俄州立大學(Ohio State University)的研究人員發布了一項調查的詳細結果。人們可能認為大學生想到性的頻率比一般人高，於是研究人員就對大學生進行了調查。他們要求調查對象每次想到性時，就在記錄中記上一筆。結果顯示，男生平均每天有19次想到性（女生則只有10次）。這是不是意味著，應該把“每7秒”修改成“醒著的時候平均每小時想到一次”？不見得，除非男人想到性的時間間隔是絕對固定的。而且，無論是預測愛情還是預測股市，都沒那麼容易。

譯者/何黎

感謝有您邁向2012

2011-12-29T17:37:00.001-08:00

感謝有您 邁向2012

hc的”剪貼簿”在2011年約有25萬人次造訪

戴明圈: A Taiwanese Deming Circle

"交情千千" 電子連絡簿(日報)

胡適的世界 The World of Hu Shih

管理學新生

 Books Birdviews 書海

 People 人物

 品質世界 quality world

教育人

 英文人行道 et cetera, et cetera .

漢語人行道：演變風貌

 譯藝

 英國風

 日本心得帖

 亞洲

 SHE健康一生

《可靠性入門》Reliability by Arnold Kaufmann

2011-12-26T19:32:00.000-08:00

1983年11月8日(我近30年之後才注意到出版日)，台北的徐氏基金會出版我翻譯的《可靠性入門》Reliability by Arnold Kaufmann (Paperback - 1972)。我的「編譯序」如下：

《可靠性入門》譯序

「可靠性」這門學問，經過數十年來的研究和應用，已成為系統科學的一大主流。然而其文獻和資料太過艱難和浩瀚，所以青年學者每每不得其門而入，只有望「可靠性」而興嘆。鄙人有感於此，特根據昔日留英所購之一本精彩導論，編譯了惡本《可靠性入門》。原書為斐譽世界的法國數學家 M. ARNOLD KAUFMANN 等人為法國的青年所寫，由於深入淺出，精彩無比，所以英國的空中 (開放)大學列為參考書。

本書旨在幫助青年學生 (高中生就可以)和社會人士了解「可靠性」這門日益重要的學問》所以但求能言簡意賅，能幫助讀者很快掌握「可靠性」，並用許多例子來輔助關鍵性概念的說明，希望這種刻意安排，能幫助讀者很快掌握「可靠性」的各重要主題。

本書所探討的概念，對於有志成為科學家(如生物學家) 、工程師 (可靠性的許多經驗和需求，都是源自工程學)社會科學家(如保險精算師、應用統計學家)的青年，都是必備的修養和和工具。可靠性所探討的生命曲線(Mortality Curve )適用於各種生物、工程和人文現象，只是其實際曲線之形狀，要依各系統(不論是電子、機械或生物)的可靠性而定。本書的另一特色，是對基本兒重要的可靠性原理，都有淺顯兒深入的介紹，誠為一本不可多得的入門書。有心想進一步研究的青年朋友，請不吝向編譯者連絡。

感謝電子工業研究所的嚴強先生的耐心謄稿，也謝謝徐氏基金會的慨允出版，了卻鄙人的一樁心願。本書如有什麼缺點，那是鄙人的責任，請指教。

編譯序

前言

可靠的評價

殘存律

基本概念：故障率

主要殘存分布

器材不再是新的時

器材來源不齊一時

一個數值例子

系統故障的邏輯

單調結構函數

可靠性網路

可靠性函數

如何增進可靠性

冗餘

抽換

複雜系統的殘存率

基本更生理論

殘存曲線之決定方法

維護

結論 60

參考書目 61

索引 62

作者簡介

他的其他著作(不全)

Introduction to Fuzzy Arithmetic: Theory and Applications (Van Nostrand Reinhold Electrical/Computer Science and Engineering Series) by Arnold Kaufmann, Madan M. Gupta, Arnold Kaufman and Bob Esposito (Paperback - Jul 1991)

The Science of Decision-Making: An Introduction to Praxeology by Arnold. Kaufmann (Paperback - Jan 1968)

Dynamic Programming by Arnold Kaufmann and R. Cruon (Hardcover - Dec 1967)

Graphs, Dynamic Programming and Finite Games by Arnold Kaufmann (Hardcover - Oct 1967)

Introduction to Operations Research by Arnold Kaufmann and R. Faure (Hardcover - Nov 1968)

Integer and Mixed Programming Theory and Applications by Arnold Kaufmann and Arnaud Henry-Labordere (Hardcover - Dec 1977)

Methods and Models of Operations Research by Arnold Kaufmann (Hardcover - Dec 1963)

Science of Decision Making: Introduction to Praxiology by Arnold Kaufmann and R. Audley (Hardcover - Mar 1968)

Fuzzy Mathematical Models in Engineering and Management Science by Arnold Kaufmann (Hardcover - Oct 1988)

Points and Arrows by Arnold Kaufmann (Paperback - Sep 22 1972)

Newt's big

2011-12-22T21:31:00.000-08:00

Gingrich drew inspiration from management theorist

Deming led Japan back after WWII

By Jim McElhatton

The Washington Times

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

TRANSFORMATIVE: Management guru W. Edwards Deming, seen here in February 1987, found an eager student during the last years of his life in the 1990s in Newt Gingrich. (Associated Press)

In March 1992, House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich sent copies of two major speeches to a man about twice his age living in Washington.

The first speech was what Mr. Gingrich referred to as his “basic speech.” He called it “the necessary revolution.” The second was a policy speech he had given to the American Hospital Association about ways to bring down costs.

In a letter along with the speeches, Mr. Gingrich privately confided that he was certain that both speeches “contained significant errors and lack some key principles.”

“If you could read these speeches and identify both the mistakes that are in them and the principles that I have missed that need to be included,” Mr. Gingrich added.

The recipient of the letter was a 91-year-old management guru named W. Edwards Deming, a statistician and consultant credited with helping Japan become a world power after World War II through manufacturing. Mr. Gingrich made no secret of his admiration for Mr. Deming’s teachings while in Congress.

During the last three years of his life - from 1991 to 1993 - Mr. Deming corresponded regularly with Mr. Gingrich. Today, the correspondence shows the presidential candidate, who talks often about his days as a history professor, in the clear role of student.

“I am hereby applying to be an apprentice to you,” Mr. Gingrich said in a handwritten note to Mr. Deming in July 1991 after Mr. Deming visited Congress. “Monday was an historic day in the Capitol,” Mr. Gingrich wrote. “You won a number of converts to ‘profound knowledge.’

“Now we must study and learn,” he wrote, adding that “with your help, training and leadership, I believe we can transform America.”

Mr. Gingrich included a copy of the Congressional Record, which contained Mr. Gingrich’s speech on the floor of the House about Mr. Deming’s visit to the Capitol. On the front page of the document, Mr. Gingrich jotted another note.

“My brief remarks … fail to do justice to the tremendous impact you made on Monday,” Mr. Gingrich wrote. “A number of members, staff and White House people have told me how impressed they are.”

In his House speech, Mr. Gingrich referred to Mr. Deming as “the founder of the quality movement” and added that he was known as “the man who initially in the late 1940s and early 1950s educated the Japanese into the process of quality.”

Aside from advice on the speeches, Mr. Gingrich sought a reading list.

“Every time we meet, I learn more about your philosophy and how deeply it would transform our society,” Mr. Gingrich wrote. “If there are books or articles that profoundly influenced you, I would be glad to read them to get a better understanding of the context of your philosophical development,” he told Mr. Deming.

A spokesman for the Gingrich campaign did not respond to a request for an interview about the correspondence, which is contained in a collection of Mr. Deming’s papers on file at the Library of Congress.

In a letter he sent to Mr. Deming in February 1993, Mr. Gingrich again sought Mr. Deming’s feedback on a speech titled “Renewing America’s Civilization.”

Story Continues →

Newt's big week!According to some polls, the bloviating Newt Gingrich is the new GOP front-runner. It won't last(37)不知道此號人物者請找本blog

Gingrich Gave Push to Clients, Not Just Ideas

By MIKE McINTIRE and JIM RUTENBERG

Newt Gingrich is adamant that he is not a lobbyist, but in the eight years since he started his health care consultancy, he has made millions of dollars while helping companies promote their services.

Gingrich Earned $1.6 Million Calling Freddie Mac 'Insane' Newt Gingrich made at least $1.6 million from consulting contracts with Freddie Mac over a period of eight years, Bloomberg News reports. Asked in a recent debate what he did for Freddie, Mr. Gingrich said he "offered them advice on precisely what they didn't do," calling the mortgage finance company's practices "insane."

"缺腿的小熊算是熊嗎? ".可運作的定義 operational definition

2011-12-20T00:18:00.000-08:00

這一糖果回收的消息讓我想起在戴明博士的新經濟學中
他採用某小學老師的利用玩具餅乾來教小朋友什麼叫
可運作的定義 operational definition
"缺腿的小熊算是熊嗎? ".......

Winn-Dixie Voluntarily Recalls Gummy Bears

Posted in: Grocery Recalls

A major grocery chain, Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc., in the US is implementing a voluntary recall of a specific brand of bulk gummy bears sold in its stores. The recalled gummy bears are sold under the brand Sunrise.

The affected bulk gummy bears are being recalled because of possible metal contamination. Consumption of food containing small amounts of metal might be harmful to a person’s health.

These gummy bears were sold in the self-serve bulk areas of select Winn-Dixie stores’ produce departments. The recalled gummy bears were sold in the stores from November 14 until December 13.

The following Winn-Dixie stores in different areas of Louisiana and Florida were selling recalled “Sunrise Assorted Flavor Gummy Bears:”

St. John Commons in W. Jacksonville,Florida

Concord Shopping Mall inMiami,Florida

Main StreetSquare inFern Park,Florida

Pepper Tree Plaza in Margate,Florida

Store in 70431 Hi-way 21,Covington,Los Angeles

The grocery chain is implementing a voluntary recall out of caution, in order to prevent any possible medical emergencies resulting from consumption of the affected product. To date, there have been no reports of illnesses that are related to the recalled gummy bears.

Mary Kellmanson, group vice president for marketing of Winn-Dixie, is encouraging guests and consumers that have concerns (about the product or recall) to return the gummy bears in order to be given full refund. Winn-Dixie will refund the recalled product without any questions asked. Consumers who have questions about the recall, or the gummy bears, can contact Winn-Dixie’sGuestServiceCenter. The center’s toll-free number is 1-866-WINN-DIXIE, or 1-866-946-6349.

Dr. Deming 的教育改革的故事

2011-12-18T17:23:00.000-08:00

我上周五晚上在陳文魁教授主講的

報告專題：雲端與我們的未來 (他其實在介紹應付某美國管理學院的認證之科技作法)

我講了許多Dr. Deming 的教育改革的故事.....

RECOMMENDED: SEA CHANGE
A report from the NEA's Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching calls for "systemic changes in the [nation's] educational structures by engaging teachers in the decision-making processes that impact student learning." The report urges "moving from a top-down hierarchical model to a circular structure of shared responsibility" that will "engage students as active participants in their own learning." To place student learning at the center, schooling must transform from a time-oriented system based on grade level and credits earned to a performance-based system aligned to national learning standards. Student learning must be at the center of decisions about instructional models, scheduling, school structure, and flexibility. To set student-learning goals and assess outcomes, teachers must work in collaborative teams and use professional judgment based on teaching standards and practice. At the same time, teachers must have authority to make instructional and educational management choices and decisions. Teachers must also share in the responsibility for teacher selection, evaluation, and dismissal. In sum, the teaching profession requires transformational changes in recruitment, selection, preparation, professional learning, evaluation, compensation, and career advancement. This information is from PEN NewsBlast.

continuous improvement and continuous cost reduction

2011-12-05T20:51:00.000-08:00

Op-Ed Columnist

Dr. Berwick’s Pink Slip

By JOE NOCERA

Published: December 5, 2011

Dr. Donald Berwick was already in Massachusetts when I spoke to him Sunday afternoon. He was back in the Newton home where he’d lived for 30 years, being pleasantly interrupted during our conversation by his 2-year-old grandson. His last day in Washington as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had been Thursday. Friday was packing day. Saturday was moving day. And, by Sunday, he was already talking about his too-short, 17-month tenure as the nation’s top Medicare official in the past tense. Which, alas, it was.

Earl Wilson/The New York Times

Joe Nocera

Dr. Berwick, I’m here to tell you, was the most qualified person in the country to run Medicare at this critical juncture, and the fact that he is no longer in the job is the country’s loss. Berwick started out as a pediatrician and health care researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health and eventually became vice president of the Harvard Community Health Plan (now known as Harvard Pilgrim Health Care). There, he became enamored with the ideas being promulgated by management gurus like W. Edwards Deming and companies like Toyota, which believed that companies could create processes — and a mind-set — that would allow for both continuous improvement and continuous cost reduction. Indeed, they believed that the two went hand in hand.

Latching onto these ideas, Berwick helped start — and, for the next 19 years, run — the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, which was devoted to applying them to health care. The result would be healthier patients who spent less time in hospitals — and a culture that wasted less money on things that didn’t lead directly to a healthier population.

As the insurer of one out of every three Americans, Medicare is in an enviable position to push for health care improvements, if it chooses to. And with a budget larger than the Pentagon’s — and a consensus that its spending must be brought under control — no government agency has a more urgent need to cut costs. Surely somebody who has spent his career focused on these two issues would seem to be just the ticket.

But there’s one more thing about Berwick: He believes that President Obama’s health care reform is “an important moral step toward universal health care.” As he put it when we spoke: “Because of it, our country is, at last, making health care a basic human right. It is a majestic thing.”

Naturally, this view made him anathema to Republicans, who blocked his nomination in the usual way. They pored through his old speeches and articles, plucked out a few comments they objected to — he once praised the British health care system! — and announced that they would never confirm him.

President Obama was not deterred the way he had been when Republicans objected to Elizabeth Warren becoming the chief of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Instead, in July 2010, Obama named Berwick to the post in a recess appointment that did not require Senate confirmation. But, like all recess appointments, it was temporary. Berwick left the post just weeks before his appointment was set to expire.

What did Berwick accomplish in those 17 months? A lot — though not nearly as much as he would have liked to. His focus, as it has always been, was on improving the quality of health care and cutting costs. “On my third day,” he said, “I held a staff meeting for all 5,000 members of the staff, and I said, ‘You all think that you are in the business of paying bills. Yes, you do that. But I also think Medicare can be a force for change.’ ” He added, “I tried to reconceptualize it as an improvement organization.”

As Berwick tells it — and others affirm — the Medicare staff had been hungering for such a mission. “We had a triple aim,” he says. “Better health care. Better health for the overall population. And lower costs. I thought that, my goodness, given the resources and the reach — and the great staff, which was a wonderful surprise — we ought to be able to help health care providers do much better.”

Health insurers and hospitals, who had generally thought of Medicare as little more than a stodgy, bureaucratic insurer, began to see it in a different light as well, as Medicare staffers, trained as “improvement coaches,” began to share ideas and push for simple, sensible steps that would, for instance, keep people with chronic medical problems from having to be constantly readmitted to the hospital.

Of course, 17 months is hardly enough time to complete such a transformation, and it is hard to know if Berwick’s emphasis on quality will stick. What he needed, most of all, was more time — precisely what the Republicans wouldn’t give him.

By refusing to confirm him, Republicans won a pointless victory against the president. But, if the day ever comes when they — and the country — truly get serious about reforming Medicare, they may regret giving a pink slip to the best man for the job.

hbr: Five Charts that Changed Business: hc 的評論

2011-11-24T02:48:00.000-08:00

下回我選我的

hbr: Five Charts that Changed Business: hc 的評論

Five Charts that Changed Business

The Experience Curve
Created by the Boston Consulting Group in 1966, this diagram may look simple, but it captured the notion that companies develop competitive advantage through economies of scale: Over time, they learn to lower costs, gain efficiencies, and improve products by redesigning and utilizing better technology. Source: Walter Kiechel, The Lords of Strategy (Harvard Business Press, 2010)

我是這經驗曲線的專家在1986年的生產管理與實務書中就有專章討論
我現在的看法是他只是單維的圖示問題很多

Five Charts that Changed Business

The Growth Share Matrix
This grid, devised at Boston Consulting Group in 1968, crystallized the relationship between market growth and market share to help determine the overall prospects for various business units. It is used to teach managers to milk cash cows, divest dogs, invest in stars, and weigh the risks and rewards of question marks. Source: Walter Kiechel, The Lords of Strategy (Harvard Business Press, 2010)

這張其實是上張的推廣我在類似前瞻策略思考法或財務與成本分析介紹過
我從來不認為商業決策這樣死板

Five Charts that Changed Business

The Five Forces
Prior to Michael Porter's breakthrough 1979 HBR article, "competition" referred to rivalry between companies. Few people considered whether or why some industries were inherently more or less profitable than others or how persistent their profits were over time. Porter's diagram changed that—and students, strategists, consultants, and entrepreneurs now assess a company's competitive position according to the strength of the five forces. Source: "How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy," HBR March–April 1979

這是產業策略大師的招牌
我約1984年寫信告訴他
他在多國的物流成本分析的方法PHILIPS公司早就用過

Five Charts that Changed Business

Disruptive Innovation
When Clayton M. Christensen and Joseph L. Bower introduced this idea, in a 1995 HBR article, their simple chart illustrated a key insight: Established players can be threatened by lower-quality offerings that fulfill the needs of "overserved" customers—and those offerings tend to improve over time. Source: "Disruptive Technologies: Catching The Wave," HBR January–February 1995

這又是另外一位大師的說法它讓許多大公司的老闆心驚
譬如說 Intel 公司的Andy Grove找他
他接著寫幾本書探討創新與管理這現象
然而可能有神拜拜比沒拜好

Five Charts that Changed Business

The Market Pyramid
Today managers take for granted that the biggest growth opportunities lie in emerging markets—and that viable businesses can be built to serve people near "the bottom of the pyramid." That can be traced to this chart, introduced by C.K. Prahalad and Kenneth Lieberthal in HBR in 1998. People living on $5,000 to $10,000 a year may not sound like lucrative consumers, but they constitute a demographic of immense purchasing power for companies selling food, housing, or energy. Source: "The End Of Corporate Imperialism," HBR July–August 1998

這張圖選得不好這觀念在20世紀中就有啦

Divided responsibility

2011-11-21T20:41:00.000-08:00

今天某人引Dr. Deming 的話值得參考

Dear Editor:
“Divided responsibility is no responsibility,” as W. Edwards Deming’s book “The New Economics” (pp. 140-142) illustrates. Per Deming’s “Out of the Crisis” (p. 30), two inspectors often are less reliable than 1 inspector “for the simple reason that each inspector depends on the other to do the job.
Divided responsibility means that no one is responsible.”

Practical Guide to Quality 難得的實用文集

2011-11-08T20:04:00.000-08:00

Practical Guide to Quality,這是一本難得的實用文集

conjoint analysis此一統計手法的實例應用可參考Brian Joiner 博士以前的Joiner 顧問公司出版的 Practical Guide to Quality,

1 Quality in the Community: One city's Experience by George E.P. Box, laurel W. Joiner, Sue Rohan and F. Joseph Sensenbrenner, pp. 1-14

2 Design of Experiments: Shifting Quality Improvement into High Gear by Lyndon Finn, Tim Kramer and Sue Reynard, pp.15-28

3 The Key Role of Statistician in theTtransformation of North American Industry by Brian Joiner, pp29-36

4 Variation, management and W. Edwards Deming, by Brian Joiner and Marie Gaudard, pp.37-52

5 Total quality leadership vs. Management by Results, by Brian L. Joiner and Peter R. Scholtes, pp.53-62

6 Design, Marketing and Quality Management: Parts of a Whole by William H. Lawton, pp.63-75

7 Thanking about Safety, by Kevin Little, pp.77-86

8 Back from the Brink: How Quality Improvement Can avert a Crisis, by Susan E. Reyard, pp.87-92

9 Total Quality or Performance Appraisal: Choose One, by Peter R. Scholtes, pp.93-104

10 A Practical approach to quality, by peter R. Scholtes and Heero Hacquebord, pp105-126

11 Quality Improvement in the Office, by Peter r. scholtes, Lonnie S. Weiss and sue Reynard, pp.127-148

12 Creating Robust Work processes by Ronald Snee, pp.149-158

13 What's Missing in Statistical education? by Ronald d. Snee, pp.159-166

14 Reading in quality: a Selected Bibliography, pp.167-172

conjoint analysis

2011-11-08T19:36:00.000-08:00

此一統計手法的實例應用可參考Brian Joiner 博士以前的Joiner 顧問公司出版的 Practical Guide to Quality, pp.63-75
Design, Marketing and Quality Management: Parts of a Whole by William H. Lawton,

Marketing, Media & Sales

A New Way to Gain Customer Insights

How conjoint analysis, a tried-and-true market research tool, can be used to support organic growth.

by David Meer

When Dow Jones decided to revamp the Wall Street Journal in the mid-2000s, the newspaper had just endured five years of flat circulation and advertising revenue, and the whole industry was ailing. Although the Journal didn’t want to alienate its core readership, it wanted to attract new readers — in particular a younger demographic that advertisers would value. Dow Jones knew it had to make changes to its then 125-year-old newspaper. But the company’s bigger purpose was to understand the needs of an emerging segment of business news consumers that the Journal was not successfully reaching.

To help develop its strategy, Dow Jones employed a variant of conjoint analysis, a technique that has been widely used in market research for 30 years. In a traditional conjoint analysis, survey respondents are asked which products or product attributes they value as a trade-off between two or more options, repeated in enough combinations to yield a reliable ranking of each attribute’s importance. Dow Jones used this type of analysis in a new way, to identify prospective readers and reveal their preferences. After its redesign to attract this new customer segment, the Journal (now part of the News Corporation) saw a 35 percent improvement in its efforts to add new subscribers through direct marketing, reversed a three-year slump in ad sales, and experienced an annual revenue improvement of US$25 million from new programs and pricing initiatives.

In fact, for companies in industries as varied as luxury goods and retail banking, conjoint analysis is emerging as a strategic tool, providing actionable intelligence businesses can use to go beyond product optimization to support organic growth. The methodology needed to use conjoint analysis in this new way is very similar to the methodology that traditional practitioners of this type of analysis have used, but has a key variation: The marketing team uses the results to organize customer groups (and prospects) with similar preferences, providing a more detailed view of the categories they fall into, the needs they have, and the likelihood that they might become bigger (or smaller) sources of revenue.

In other words, conjoint analysis has become a new source of insight into customer segments. Of course, it would be hard to find a company that hasn’t done some kind of customer segmentation, and using conjoint analysis is certainly not the only way to achieve it. Companies usually have a sense of who their real and prospective customers are, and have an idea of what each segment considers important. But by segmenting customers with the help of conjoint analysis, companies can develop a more layered form of intelligence, with implications for which segments to prioritize, which value propositions to offer them, and how to market to them.

Looking for Luxury Shoppers

In recent years, a manufacturer of luxury gifts had become dissatisfied with the pace of growth in one of its largest geographic markets. Was the company targeting the wrong customers? Using the wrong materials? Supporting a brand with an undifferentiated value proposition? Advertising ineffectively? The company thought that if it could answer these questions, it would gain some of the insights needed to transform its organic growth strategy.

Using traditional conjoint analysis techniques, the manufacturer surveyed 2,000 luxury gift–buying consumers to find out the extent to which they were price- and brand-conscious; valued materials such as fine leather, fabrics, and metals; and wanted their gifts to elicit oohs and aahs from friends and family. The manufacturer then combined the data from the conjoint analysis with the results from other survey questions to define five customer segments and decided it had headroom — an opportunity to pick up significant market share — in several of those segments, including a group it called “classic shoppers.”

Thanks to the conjoint analysis survey, the manufacturer knew that in the “classic shopper” segment, customers ascribed great importance to prestige, cared a lot about high-quality materials, and preferred designs that made bold statements. The least important attribute to this customer segment was price — these customers didn’t mind paying a premium to get what they wanted.

The company might have already had an intuitive sense of these findings. However, the intelligence from the conjoint analysis was definitive. The results of the analysis have played a role in changing the company’s product line, changing what happens within the company’s distribution channels, and changing how and where the company spends its marketing dollars.

Protecting Profits at a Bank

In another recent example, a European bank was picking up signals that regulators were going to force it to become more transparent about the costs of loan protection, a product the bank made available to consumers who held unsecured loans. The bank didn’t make money selling unsecured loans, but it made a considerable profit selling insurance that guaranteed payment if a borrower lost his or her job or otherwise suffered an interruption of income. What would happen to the business model if regulators insisted on changes? Would there be a way to keep making money in the business of unsecured loans and loan protection?

The bank used a conjoint analysis survey of 1,600 people who had unsecured loans to estimate price elasticity for the loans themselves and for loan protection insurance. This was a way of anticipating the options it would have in the event that the regulatory environment changed, and banks were forced to raise (or lower) prices on either loan or loan-protection products.

The conjoint analysis answered the price elasticity question in the aggregate. After the bank clustered the panelists into five segments, it was also able to answer this question in a more granular way. For instance, customers in a segment the bank called “bargain hunters” were very sensitive to pricing — this group would not pay more to take out a loan or to insure it. By contrast, customers in a segment the bank designated as “personal bankers” (those who liked the high-touch approach, were willing to hear advice, and were open to special offers) were not particularly price sensitive. There would be ways, even in the event of a regulatory change, of selling this segment higher-priced unsecured loans and loan protection and profiting from it.

Indeed, one of the intriguing things about this bank’s use of conjoint analysis was the broad utility of the results. Although the analysis started off as a way to test price elasticity and prepare for external changes, the information the conjoint analysis generated — not only about how customers would respond in the event of a price increase, but also about more basic findings such as how people make borrowing decisions and how they think about financial providers — allowed the bank to identify tailored product strategies that would appeal to all its customer segments. The company decided its existing product would work for some of those segments, but that it should probably develop a no-frills product for the “bargain hunters” among its customers and a premium product for its “personal bankers.”

Segmenting for Growth

In an era of cautious consumer spending, many companies are looking for new ways to identify growth opportunities through improved customer insight. Conjoint analysis is at the forefront of this effort. The analytic rigor it brings is helping creative companies move forward with promising initiatives that they may have thought sounded good but couldn’t agree to implement without the data to back them up. Other companies find that it is generating avenues for organic growth they might not have come up with on their own.

In this way, conjoint analysis, which has historically informed relatively narrow product decisions (enhance this feature, remove that one) is turning out to have bigger strategic implications. It is a powerful tool that can fundamentally change companies’ perceptions about where opportunity lies and how to pursue it.

Author Profile:

David Meer is a senior executive advisor with Booz & Company based in New York. He specializes in customer insight and demand analytics, with a particular focus on helping companies use statistical approaches to identify organic growth opportunities.

Donald J. Wheeler

2011-11-06T03:45:00.000-08:00

Donald J. Wheeler 在80年代創 SPC Press 著作22本真不可思議

Donald J. Wheeler is an American author, statistician and expert in quality control.^[1]^[2]

Wheeler graduated from the University of Texas in 1966 and holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in statistics from Southern Methodist University. From 1970 to 1982 he taught in the Statistics Department at the University of Tennessee where he was an Associate Professor. Since 1982 he has worked as a consultant. He is the author of 22 textbooks. His books have been translated into five languages and are in use in over 40 countries. He has been invited to contribute to two state-of-the-art anthologies, and has had articles published in 16 refereed journals. He is a Fellow of both the American Statistical Association and American Society for Quality. Recently he was awarded the 2010 Deming Medal by the American Society for Quality.

Dr. Wheeler has been a monthly columnist for both Quality Digest and Quality magazine. He has conducted over 1000 seminars for over 250 companies and organizations in 17 countries on five continents, and has had students come from 30 countries to attend his seminars in the United States.

[edit] References

^ The New Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2005. p. 226. ISBN 9781593392369. Retrieved 20 June 2011.
^ A Conversation with Donald J. Wheeler, by William H. Woodall, Quality Engineering, Vol. 21 pages 357-365, 2009.

Deming Medalists

2010		Donald J. Wheeler
2009		Paul Batalden
2007		H. Thomas Johnson
2006		Peter R. Scholtes
2004		Shoichiro Toyoda
2003		Lloyd P. Provost
2002		Ronald D. Moen
2001		Henry R. Neave
2000		Thomas W. Nolan
1999		Donald E. Petersen
1998		Thomas J. Boardman Ph.D.
1997		Edward M. Baker
1996		Dr. Gipsie B. Ranney

Metropolitan Section
1995		William J. Latzko
1994		Joyce Nilsson Orsini
1993		Gerald J. Hahn
1992		William W. Scherkenbach
1991		Cuthbert Daniel
1990		George A. Barnard
1989		William A.J. Golomski
1988		George E. Box
1987		David R. Cox
1986		Brian L. Joiner
1985		J. Stuart Hunter
1984		Lloyd S. Nelson
1983		Paul C. Clifford
1982		John W. Tukey
1981		Hugo S. Hamacher
1980		John C. Mandell
1979		W. Edwards Deming

"美國各城市謀殺率 "的10年間畫法

2011-11-06T03:21:00.000-08:00

對於"美國各城市謀殺率 "的10年間前後兩點一直線的畫法和圖之數據我有些不敢茍同

Easily ahead

Nov 4th 2011, 15:04 by The Economist

Murder has become less common overall in America, but in some cities the crime has risen

IN SEPTEMBER one of New Orleans’s most dangerous men was convicted of second-degree murder and jailed for life. Yet there are signs that Telly Hankton’s reign of terror continues from behind bars. America has one of the highest homicide rates in the developed world, at 4.8 per 100,000 people. While this is less than half what it was in 1980, the rates in the country’s most murderous cities are nearly ten times that. Washington, DC, Detroit and Baltimore have made noticeable improvements over the past decade. But Newark, St Louis and New Orleans, long the nation’s murder capital, have become even deadlier.

the winners of the second annual Deming Cup

2011-11-04T23:07:00.000-07:00

The W. Edwards Deming Center for Quality, Productivity and Competitiveness Awards Dr. Brent C. James, Chief Quality Officer at Intermountain Healthcare, and Sergio Marchionne, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Chrysler Group LLC and Chief Executive Officer, Fiat S.p.A. with the Deming Cup

PR Newswire Posted 9:01 AM 11/03/11

Text Size A A A

NEW YORK, Nov. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Columbia Business School's W. Edwards Deming Center for Quality, Productivity and Competitiveness announced today the winners of the second annual Deming Cup. The winners received the award at a dinner at Columbia University on November 2, 2011. The Deming Cup grew from the center's drive to highlight the achievements of business practitioners who adhere to and promote excellence in operations – the Deming Center's area of focus. This award is given annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions in the area of operations and has established a culture of continuous improvement within their respective organization.

This year the Deming Center awarded the Cup to two recipients – Dr. Brent C. James, Chief Quality Officer at Intermountain Healthcare, and Sergio Marchionne, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Chrysler Group LLC and Chief Executive Officer, Fiat S.p.A. Dr. James was recognized for his pioneering work in applying quality improvement techniques that were originally developed by W. Edwards Deming and others, in order to help create and implement a "system" model at Intermountain, in which physicians study process and outcomes data to determine the types of care that are most effective. Sergio Marchionne was honored for proving how by executing operations principles – including focusing efforts to reduce waste, improve processes, and meet customer needs – a leader can build a stronger and more competitive business.

Samuel J. Palmisano, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of IBM Corporation, who was awarded with the inaugural Deming Cup, explained how Sergio Marchionne elevated the performance of Fiat and Chrysler Group through the use of operations techniques and visionary leadership. Mr. Palmisano introduced Mr. Marchionne at the honoree dinner. "Sergio Marchionne is a leader in the true spirit of W. Edwards Deming, the type of leader who navigates through a turbulent economy while building a business based on strong values and a long-term vision," said Mr. Palmisano. "Under his stewardship, both Chrysler and Fiat have cultivated an environment of operational efficiency and developed a collaborative, forward-thinking culture."

Keith S. Sherin, Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer of General Electric (GE), who introduced Dr. Brent James at the November 2nd event, discussed Dr. James' accomplishments in the field of operations. "Dr. James has consistently demonstrated that we can improve the quality of healthcare while lowering the cost by practicing the principles of W. Edwards Deming. Brent James is a visionary and he is passionate about teaching physicians to improve outcomes by reducing variation. Because of his work and because of Intermountain Healthcare's dedication to quality, Intermountain is recognized as one of the most effective healthcare systems in the world."

Real time exposure to Dr. James' vision and teaching has been instrumental in the collaboration between GE Healthcare and Intermountain, launched in 2005. The joint project team, including 100 Intermountain and 325 GE Healthcare IT employees located at offices in Murray, UT, is creating an innovative platform to provide a standardized, portable representation of healthcare guidelines and best practices that help healthcare institutions manage clinical knowledge, improve quality and optimize the delivery of information to the point-of-care.

Nelson M. Fraiman, Director, W. Edwards Deming Center, and Professor of Professional Practice, Decision, Risk, and Operations at Columbia Business School commented on the importance of the award, "The Deming Center focuses on developing new insights in all areas of operational excellence. The award gives us an opportunity to recognize best practices in the area of operations and informs academics and executives about individual accomplishments in the field. This year's recipients depict how expertise in operations can cultivate excellence in firms in a wide range of sectors."

The Deming Cup's judging committee was led by co-chairs Robert M. Amen, Executive in Residence at Columbia Business School, and Paul H. O'Neill, Former Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. (1) The committee received nominations through a variety of channels – such as an ad in The New York Times, solicitations sent to the CEOs of the top 300 companies in the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia, business and engineering school faculty around the world and Columbia Business School's alumni and Board of Overseers committee. Nominations were received from April 1 through June 15, 2011.

A working group of the Judging Committee then screened the nominations to narrow the field to 4 finalists. Afterwards, the entire Judging Committee voted for a winner and runner-up, in order to determine who should receive the prize. Dr. James and Mr. Marchionne led the voting, receiving the same number of votes.

About Columbia Business School
Led by Dean R. Glenn Hubbard, the Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics, Columbia Business School is at the forefront of management education for a rapidly changing world. The School's cutting-edge curriculum bridges academic theory and practice, equipping students with an entrepreneurial mindset to recognize and capture opportunity in a competitive business environment. Beyond academic rigor and teaching excellence, the School offers programs that are designed to give students practical experience making decisions in real-world environments. The School offers MBA and Executive MBA (EMBA) degrees, as well as non-degree Executive Education programs. For more information, visit www.gsb.columbia.edu.

About the W. Edwards Deming Center for Quality, Productivity, and Competitiveness
The W. Edwards Deming Center for Quality, Productivity, and Competitiveness was founded in 1990 during W. Edwards Deming's last year at Columbia. The center promotes operational excellence in business through the development of research, best practices, and strategic planning. The Deming Center sponsors applied research; disseminates best practices; supports focused education and professional development; reaches senior executives through forums, executive education, and publications; and fosters partnerships with companies in the area of operational excellence.

Editor's note: The full list of the Deming Cup criteria is available upon request.The names and titles of this year's judging committee members are available upon request. (1)

SOURCE Columbia Business School

美國人口統計局另種貧窮統計

2011-11-03T22:13:00.000-07:00

Bleak Portrait of Poverty Is Off the Mark, Experts Say

Travis Dove for The New York Times

John William Springs, a retiree who gets nearly $12,000 a year in Social Security and disability checks, is $1,300 above the poverty threshold: officially, not poor.

By JASON DePARLE, ROBERT GEBELOFF and SABRINA TAVERNISE

Published: November 3, 2011

WASHINGTON — When the Census Bureau said in September that the number of poor Americans had soared by 10 million to rates rarely seen in four decades, commentators called the report “shocking” and “bleak.” Most poverty experts would add another description: “flawed.”

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A new measure places Ashley Bolton above the poverty line.

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Concocted on the fly a half-century ago, the official poverty measure ignores ever more of what is happening to the poor person’s wallet — good and bad. It overlooks hundreds of billions of dollars the needy receive in food stamps and other benefits and the similarly formidable amounts they lose to taxes and medical care. It even fails to note that rents are higher in places like Manhattan than they are in Mississippi.

On Monday, that may start to change when the Census Bureau releases a long-promised alternate measure meant to do a better job of counting the resources the needy have and the bills they have to pay. Similar measures, quietly published in the past, suggest among other things that safety-net programs have played a large and mostly overlooked role in restraining hardship: as much as half of the reported rise in poverty since 2006 disappears.

The fuller measures have also shown less poverty among children but more among older Americans, who are plagued by high medical costs. They have shown less poverty among blacks but more among Asians; less poverty in rural areas and more in cities and suburbs, where the cost of living is high. And they have found fewer people in abject destitution, but a great many more crowding the hard-luck ranks of the near poor, who do not qualify for many benefit programs and lose income to taxes, child care and medical costs.

“The official measure no longer corresponds to reality,” said Jane Waldfogel, a professor of social work at Columbia University. “It doesn’t get either side of the equation right — how much the poor have or how much they need. No one really trusts the data.”

Coming amid soaring need and bitter debt debates, the findings in Monday’s release are likely to offer fodder both to defenders of safety-net programs and fiscal conservatives who say the government already does much to temper hardship and needs to do no more.

Experts expect the new report to be consistent with a decade of research about the ways in which the official poverty rate distorts the realities of American poverty.

The numbers in this article are based on that research — by the census, the National Academy of Sciences and others — and include not just cash income but also government benefits, work expenses, taxes and cost of living. Many experts expect Monday’s census report, based on similar methods, to add a bit to the official poverty count of 46.2 million, while most experts also expect the recent growth will ap-pear less steep.

One alternate census data set quietly published last week said the number of poor people has grown by 4.6 million since 2006, not by 9.7 million as the bureau reported in September. At least 39 states showed no statistically significant poverty growth despite surging unemployment, according to an analysis by The New York Times, including Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas.

In North Carolina, poverty has risen by more than 250,000 people by official count, but stayed flat under the alternate measure despite soaring unemployment.

One explanation can be found in programs the official count ignores: food stamps and tax credits. Combined the two programs delivered $221 billion across the country last year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, more than doubling since 2006.

In Charlotte, Angelique Melton was among the beneficiaries. A divorced mother of two, Ms. Melton, 42, had worked her way up to a $39,000 a year position at a construction management firm. But as building halted in 2009, Ms. Melton lost her job.

Struggling to pay the rent and keep the family adequately fed, she took the only job she could find: a part-time position at Wal-Mart that paid less than half her former salary. With an annual income of about $7,500 — well below the poverty line of $17,400 for a family of three — Ms. Melton was officially poor.

Unofficially she was not.

After trying to stretch her shrunken income, Ms. Melton signed up for $3,600 a year in food stamps and received $1,800 in nutritional supplements from the Women, Infants and Children program. And her small salary qualified her for large tax credits, which arrive in the form of an annual check — in her case for about $4,000.

Along with housing aid, those subsidies gave her an annual income of nearly $18,800 — no one’s idea of rich, but by the new count not poor.

“They help you, my God,” Ms. Melton said. “I would not have made it otherwise.”

The official way of counting poverty — beloved not even by many of the people who run the count — is a historical artifact. A federal official named Mollie Orshansky created it as a placeholder in 1963 until something more sophisticated came along.

It takes a limited view of income by counting cash alone. It ignores expenses, like taxes and medical costs. And it set the poverty threshold in an outmoded way — as a multiple of food costs, which have dwindled as a share of most budgets, as is typical as a country becomes richer over time.

All three elements need updating, experts say. Yet other than to adjust the poverty line for inflation, the government has not changed it since Ms. Orshansky’s day. Efforts to do so have been slowed by both technical and political concerns. Conservatives worry liberals will inflate the number to justify more spending; liberals worry conservatives will define poverty away.

Virtually every effort to take a fuller view — counting more income and more expenses — shows poverty rising more slowly in the recession than the official data suggests. That is true of localized studies in New York City and Wisconsin and at least four different national data sets that the Census Bureau publishes. While the official national measure shows a rise of 9.8 million people, the fuller census measures show a range from 4.5 million to 4.8 million.

“That’s a big difference,” said Timothy Smeeding, an economist at the University of Wisconsin who oversaw the study in that state. “It’s about time we started counting the programs we use to fight poverty.”

Arloc Sherman, a senior researcher at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the new measure “is showing that government help is keeping millions of families above the poverty line right now.”

While most scholars have called the fuller measure a step forward, Robert Rector, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, argues that both census counts — old and new — sharply overstate the amount of deprivation in the United States. In a recent study, he cited government data showing many poor families had game systems like Xbox.

“When the American public hears the word poverty, they are thinking about material hardship — bad housing, homelessness and hunger,” he said. “Most of the people that are defined as poor by the government are not poor in that sense.”

One consistent finding in the alternate measures is that poverty falls among children, the target of many government programs. And it rises among Americans 65 or older, who often have high out-of-pocket medical costs, despite being covered by Medicare.

Such is the case for John William Springs, 69, a retired city worker in Charlotte who gets nearly $12,000 a year in Social Security and disability checks. That leaves him about $1,300 above the poverty threshold for a single adult his age — officially not poor. Then again, Mr. Springs had a heart attack last summer and struggles with lung disease. Factor in the $2,500 a year that he estimates he spends on medicine, and Mr. Springs crosses the statistical line into poverty.

An upbeat survivor of a lifetime of need, Mr. Springs fills his prescriptions in partial amounts and argues the poverty counters got him right the first time.

“I ain’t poor,” he said. “I eat. I got a roof over my head.”

Some experts say cases like that of Mr. Springs may point to a hidden need among the elderly, whose official poverty rates have sharply declined over the past generation. Others have cautioned that the new measure still has flaws — failing to capture, for instance, that many elderly can draw from savings and are less reliant on annual income and benefits than younger people.

One concern in recent years is the sharp rise in “deep” poverty, defined as living on less than half the money it would take to no longer be poor. That is partly because of changes that make cash welfare harder to get. Yet many of the very poor do receive food stamps, a program whose rapid expansion has made it a safety net of last resort.

In part by counting food stamps, the fuller Census measure analyzed by The Times shows deep poverty falling by nearly 25 percent.

At the same time, all the new measures show many more people in “near poverty” — living on incomes between 100 percent and 150 percent of the poverty line. The alternate census data show a 50 percent rise in their numbers, with 44 million Americans in that economic band, where benefits dwindle in sums lost to taxes and child care, and medical expenses mount. “That’s where your safety net benefits phase out,” said Sheila Zedlewski, a researcher at the Urban Institute.

Even with assistance, life is a series of hard choices. Ashley Bolton was lifted above the poverty line under the new measure by about $10,000 in federal programs that cushioned her earnings as a hostess at the Original Pancake House in Charlotte. Still, sometimes she lets her car insurance lapse. She juggles two part-time jobs with classes to become a pharmacy technician, and relies on her mother, who works nights, to put her children to bed.

“I live the recession,” Ms. Bolton said. “All that stuff that happened to people — that’s my life every day.”

Published: November 3, 2011

A Different Portrait of Poverty

To address shortcomings in the way poverty is measured in the United States, the Census Bureau has developed more comprehensive alternate measures. The example below calculates poverty rates by taking into account cost of living, taxes, medical expenses and benefits like food stamps and housing subsidies. Related Article »

do 之前要"小規模試驗"一下成功之後才"放行"

2011-11-02T23:33:00.000-07:00

近日收到數封提到 Dr. Deming 的英文資料不過都是老生常談
近日"猴急的Google Gmail iOS app "讓我想起Dr. Deming 奉勸大家PDSA
do 之前要"小規模試驗"一下成功之後才"放行"

猴急
焦急。如：「你別這麼猴急，等水開了再喝也不遲！」亦作「喉急」。

Google, Why Don't You Hang On To That Gmail App For A While?
TechCrunch
Learn More By now you're probably well aware that Google released their long-awaited Gmail iOS app today, only to unceremoniously yank it from the App Store when people pointed out that it didn't really work. Google offered a mea culpa by stating that ...

Google, Why Don't You Hang On To That Gmail App For A While?
TechCrunch
Learn More By now you're probably well aware that Google released their long-awaited Gmail iOS app today, only to unceremoniously yank it from the App Store when people pointed out that it didn't really work. Google offered a mea culpa by stating that ...

教育問題

2011-10-24T22:16:00.000-07:00

類似的見解許多人都說過如W. Edwards Deming 博士等
台灣最需改變的是教育問題 (李登輝)

Japan’s Standardized Baseballs Are Popular With Pitchers

2011-10-23T18:52:00.001-07:00

Japan’s Standardized Baseballs Are Popular With Pitchers

Mizuno

The new ball used for all top-league games in Japan, made by Mizuno, has features that make it popular among pitchers.

By BRAD LEFTON

Published: October 22, 2011

TOKYO — Unlike Major League Baseball, for whom Rawlings has been the official supplier of baseballs since 1977, Japan’s top league has long used multiple manufacturers.

The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami (October 23, 2011)

This season, however, for the first time in the 75-year history of Nippon Professional Baseball, every team is using the same supplier.

In any given season, as many as nine manufacturers had supplied baseballs to Japan’s 12 teams. Many clubs, in fact, contracted with multiple suppliers and freely switched the balls they used in their home games depending on the series, the month or some other variable that had to be revealed in advance to the commissioner’s office.

Citing rising costs and declining domestic production, Commissioner Ryozo Kato began the tedious and touchy process of unifying Japan’s ball last year. Mizuno emerged as the lone supplier.

But old customs are hard to break, and in tradition-bound Japan, the move to a unified ball comes with a twist: it is required only for official games played between major league teams. Individual clubs can continue choosing their own baseballs for minor league games, spring training games and practices. According to the commissioner’s office, at least two teams that contracted with multiple baseball makers last year, the Hanshin Tigers and the Yakult Swallows, continue to use those balls in unsanctioned events.

In Japanese baseball, power has traditionally rested with the teams. Franchises have operated independently on a variety of issues, including deciding which ball manufacturers to contract with, much as players in the United States and Japan decide which manufacturers’ bats, gloves and spikes they use.

In Japan, a culture evolved in which sporting goods makers, especially smaller regional ones, became dependent on their relationships with local clubs to supply thousands of balls each year.

“In order to build relationships that stand the test of time, you have to be willing to endure lots of hardships on your customers’ behalf,” Katsuhisa Matsuzaki, a spokesman for N.P.B, said in Japanese, describing the traditional arrangement. “For a team to then turn around and say to a supplier that persevered, ‘Sorry, we don’t you need anymore,’ is not the Japanese way.”

So instead of trying to undo longstanding relationships, Japan’s commissioner’s office established standards over the years to attain a degree of uniformity among the game balls being produced by multiple manufacturers.

That began as far back as 1950, when the Central and Pacific Leagues came under one governing umbrella. Over the years, standards pertaining to the balls were gradually tightened. This happened, for example, in 1981, after a game was delayed by 20 minutes as one team accused another of using a suspicious ball with extra zip. But until this year, teams could use any ball that adhered to the standards.

The new Mizuno ball for this season has been called the noncarrying ball, a reference to the effect of the lower-elasticity rubber that encases the cork center. Not surprisingly, pitchers like the new ball for that and other subtle changes they can use to their advantage.

“It breaks better, moves more advantageously for the pitcher,” Hisashi Iwakuma of the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, speaking in Japanese, said of the new ball. “Whether you throw a fork or a curve or a slider, the break is bigger. Even your fastball doesn’t have to be perfectly straight; you can make it miss the sweet spot of the bat.”

Iwakuma said pitchers could manipulate the slightly lower height of the red stitches and their slightly wider spread.

Japan’s regular season was extended until this week because of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March and unusually heavy rain. But the ball is believed to be responsible for an abundance of curiosities.

Through Friday’s games, seven pitchers among the 12 clubs had earned run averages below 2.00 while throwing more than 170 innings. By comparison, despite his dominant performance of 24 wins in 29 decisions, Detroit’s Justin Verlander, the major league leader in E.R.A. among starters at 2.40, would not crack Japan’s top 10.

Among those Japanese pitchers is Yu Darvish, 25, who many believe will be made available to American teams this winter by the Nippon Ham Fighters. But Darvish’s 1.44 E.R.A. was only second best in the Pacific League. As a testament to his acumen, though, he had a 1.78 E.R.A. last season.

In another oddity, Darvish’s team tied a Japanese record with five consecutive shutout victories during a stretch in May. That was part of nine shutouts in 11 games by the Fighters’ staff, three of them complete-game shutouts by Darvish.

Robust pitching has turned the batting races into rather pedestrian competitions. Worry abounds that the race in at least one league could produce the lowest average for a batting champion in Japanese history. The Hiroshima Carp’s Katsuya Morinaga holds that distinction, capturing the Central League’s 1962 title with a .307 average. This season’s race has come down to the Yomiuri Giants’ Hisayoshi Chono (.315) and Hanshin’s Matt Murton (.312), with three others teetering around .300. Last year, 14 players in the league hit .300 or better, with .358 taking the title. In the Pacific League, five players were hitting over .300, with the leader at .339.

Most noticeable of all, home runs were down. With three players totaling 40 or more homers last year, the overall title was claimed with 49. This season, only the Seibu Lions’ Takeya Nakamura and the Yakult Swallows’ Wladimir Balentien will finish with more than 30.

Although Japan’s new ball is not meant to replicate the American major league ball, a conscious effort was made to make it much more similar than before. That is a crucial point in Japan, where performance in international competitions like the quadrennial World Baseball Classic, which uses the American ball, weighs on the national conscience. Kato, the commissioner, said as much at a news conference when he unveiled the new ball before the season.

“Certainly, an impetus for the uniform ball was seeing with my own eyes the difficulties Japanese pitchers had with the different ball at the W.B.C.,” he said of the 2009 tournament, which Japan won. “By unifying our approach to the domestic game, we can lessen such discomforts that arise for our players on the international stage.”

That could pave the way for Mizuno to bid on the contract to supply the American major leagues. The leagues’ contract with Rawlings, which replaced Spalding after a century as the sole ball supplier, expires in 2013.

At the preseason news conference, Kato was seemingly focused on something larger than his own league when he proclaimed Japan’s new ball to be “of a higher quality than the one used in the American major leagues.”

重視學術研究

2011-10-20T02:03:00.000-07:00

Dr. Deming 相當重視學術研究.....

別給學術研究估價
New ways with old numbers
作者：英國《金融時報》專欄作家蒂姆•哈福德

Academics are always being asked to demonstrate the “impact” of their research. (Is it like being hit by a rogue cyclist? Or is it more like a pile-driver, or even an asteroid strike?) But while it is not unreasonable to ask whether a particular piece of academic research is useful, the difficulties in answering the question are extraordinary.

學者總是被要求證明其研究的“影響”。（是像被一輛不規矩的自行車撞了一下？還是更像一台打樁機、甚至是一次小行星撞擊？）儘管詢問某項學術研究是否有用並非不合情理，但要回答這一問題，難度非常大。

The quality of a piece of research is subjective, and using measures such as the number of peer-reviewed articles published simply outsources the subjective judgment to somebody else. But there is a deeper problem: in a complex world, it is impossible for anyone to judge what the significance of a research breakthrough might eventually be.

一項研究的質量高低是主觀的，用發表的同行評審文章數量等標準作為衡量尺度，不過是把主觀判斷“外包”給了別人。但有一個更深層次的問題：在一個複雜的世界裡，任何人都不可能判斷出一項研究突破的最終意義。

Nowhere is this more true than in the field of mathematics. The most famous example is the development of imaginary numbers. The very name conveys the supposed uselessness of the concept. Square the imaginary unit, i, and you get minus one. Baffling.

在數學界，這一點最為明顯。最著名的例子便是虛數理論的發展。虛數這個名字本身就傳遞出了人們認為這一概念無用的態度。虛數單位i的平方等於-1。這真是令人費解。

Imaginary numbers were regarded with great scepticism after they were developed in Bologna in the 16th century as the logical solution to an abstract problem. Eventually, however, they turned out to be essential for, among other applications, electrical engineering – hardly something that could have been imagined by their creators.

虛數於16世紀誕生在意大利的博洛尼亞，試圖用邏輯解決一個抽象問題。自誕生之日起，人們對它一直持有強烈的懷疑態度。然而，最終，它被證明對於電子工程至關重要（還有其它應用），而這是虛數的發明者們很難想像得到的。

So are imaginary numbers typical of the unexpected bounties of pure mathematics – or an unrepresentative poster child? Two recent commentators have tried to expand the number of examples. Professor Caroline Series of the University of Warwick devoted a recent presidential lecture at the British Science Festival to this topic, focusing on the applications of non-Euclidian geometry.

那麼，虛數在理論數學的意外收穫中到底有沒有代表性呢？最近，兩位評論人士試圖增加樣本數量。華威大學(University of Warwick)的卡羅琳•希爾麗絲(Caroline Series)教授最近在英國科學節(British Science Festival)上的校長演講就關注於這一主題，主要討論了非歐幾里得幾何學的應用。

When Euclid originally laid down the axioms of his geometric system 23 centuries ago, one of them seemed less than obvious. For 2,000 years mathematicians tried to derive the “fifth postulate” – equivalent to the claim that the internal angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees – from more basic building blocks, and failed. Eventually it transpired that the axiom was optional. Consistent systems of geometry were possible in which the internal angles of triangles summed to more than 180 degrees, or even to fewer.

2300年前，當歐幾里得(Euclidian)最初提出構成他幾何體系的那些公理時，其中一個公理似乎一點也不顯眼。 2000年來，數學家們試圖用更基礎的公設推導出“第五公設”(fifth postulate)——其內容相當於一個三角形的內角之和等於180度——但都沒有成功。最終，事實表明，這一公理並非放之四海皆準。有可能存在一些一致的幾何體系，其中三角形的內角之和可能超過180度，甚至可能小於180度。

Surfaces on which the sum of angles in a triangle is less than 180 degrees look like leaves of kale. Prof Series points out that the development of kale-like geometric systems, called hyperbolic geometry, initially seemed a curiosity but made possible Einstein's theory of special relativity. Now, says Prof Series, hyperbolic geometry promises to advance our understanding of the way complex networks such as the internet behave and grow.

三角形內角之和小於180度的面，看上去就像是甘藍的葉子。希爾麗絲教授指出，甘藍狀幾何體系——即“雙曲幾何”——的提出，最初純粹就是奇言怪論，但卻讓愛因斯坦(Einstein)的狹義相對論得以成立。希爾麗絲教授表示，如今，雙曲幾何將有望提升我們對互聯網等複雜網絡表現和增長方式的理解。

Peter Rowlett, a maths educator and historian, recently gathered further examples together in the journal Nature. The “sphere packing problem” – beginning with the conjecture that grocers have found the most efficient way to stack oranges – has been an open area of research for four centuries, but in the 1970s a solution for eight-dimensional “spheres” was used to design efficient modems. This meant that internet access no longer required specialised cables.

數學教育家、歷史學家彼得•羅萊特(Peter Rowlett)最近在《自然》(Nature)雜誌上收集了更多的例子。 400年來，“球體填充問題”一直是一個懸而未決的研究領域。該問題源自於一種猜想，即水果店老闆發現瞭如何最有效地擺放橙子的方法，但在上世紀70年代，用於解決八維“空間”的一種方法被用於設計高效調製解調器。這意味著，互聯網接入不再需要專門電纜。

Quaternions, which extend imaginary numbers into a further dimension, began to be developed by William Hamilton in Dublin in 1843. They were eclipsed by matrix algebra, before being rediscovered as indispensable for generating 3D computer graphics efficiently. Rowlett's contributors offered several other examples.

1843年，威廉•漢密爾頓(William Hamilton)在都柏林發明了四元數，將虛數擴展到四維空間。這一理論在很長一段時間內都因矩陣代數的存在而不受重視，直到被重新發現，成為高效製作3D電腦圖像不可或缺的理論。羅萊特的投稿人還提供了其它幾個例子。

Cost-benefit analysis has its place. But the benefits of academic research can pop up in such unexpected ways, sometimes immediately and sometimes after centuries. We should not set too much store by any bureaucrat's analysis of “academic impact”.

成本效益分析自有其道理。但學術研究的好處可能會以極其意外的方式突然出現，有時是馬上出現，有時則是在幾個世紀之後。我們不應過於看重某個官員對“學術影響”的分析。

Tim Harford's latest book is 'Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure' (Little, Brown)

本文作者的新書《適者生存：為何失敗是成功之母》(Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure)由利特爾-布朗公司(Little, Brown)出版

譯者/梁艷裳

2011The Deming Application Prize: 恭賀欣興電子等等

2011-10-19T04:28:00.000-07:00

2011 the Deming Prize Winners Announced

The Deming Prize Committee has determined and is pleased to announce this year's winners as follows. The Deming Prize Award Ceremony will take place at KEIDANREN KAIKAN on November 9, 2011 from 17:30 to 18:00, followed by the celebration party from 18:00 to 19:00.
Prior to the award ceremony, the Winners Presentation by this year's award winning organizations will be held from 13:00 to 16:45 at the same venue.

1. The Japan Quality Medal


	Rane TRW Steering Systems Limited, Steering Gear Division, (India) Mr. Harish Lakshman, Managing Director

2. The Deming Prize for Individuals

Ricoh Company, Ltd. (Japan)
Mr. Masamitsu Sakurai, Chairman

3. The Deming Application Prize

Sanden Vikas (India) Limited, (India)
Mr. Naveen Agarwal, Executive Director & COO

The CPAC Roof Tile Company Limited, (Thailand)
Mr. Noppadol Gaewthabthim, Managing Director

Unimicron Technology Corporation, (Taiwan)
Mr. T. J. Tseng, Chairman & CEO

此公司的網路資料更新很慢....10月19日還沒此新聞

http://www.unimicron.com/qa01.htm

群策群力，追求永續

2010年對於欣興是忙碌又成果豐碩的一年，我們致力於組織、資源整合，並且持續改善，提升產品品質和生產技術，在全體員工努力及客戶支持下，營業額達新台幣650億，為歷年來的新高，獲利也不錯，甚感欣慰。

我們為未來許下更挑戰的承諾—「成為世界領導公司」。經過多次討論及腦力激盪，彙集了經營階層智慧及團隊的共識，2011~2013的中期計劃如下：

加速文化與資源的融合，鼓勵持續改善與創新
培育關鍵核心人才
藉由跨部門合作，提昇客戶滿意
提升技術領先的管理
善盡企業社會責任，推動節能減廢

全體員工皆以此為方針管理的準則，更宣示2011年爭取日本戴明獎，以國際級專業單位嚴謹的標準，健全公司根基，督促成長。

我們體認到21世紀企業責任，不再局限於企業個體的經營與獲利，2010年10月正式成立「企業社會責任管理委員會」，結合供應商的力量，提出對客戶、員工、投資人、環境與社群七大承諾，並將公司各項管理指標透明化。

喜聞鐘聲催奮進，更借東風展新姿，欣興銳意革新、精彩的演出已經揭幕，期盼各界的支持與鼓勵，衷心祝福各位身體健康、萬事如意、闔家幸福。

董事長：曾子章
2011年春

4. The Nikkei QC Literature Prize (available in Japanese only)

2011年度日本品質管理賞・デミング賞本賞，実施賞，日経品質管理文献賞受賞者一覧


	デミング賞委員会は、2011年度の「日本品質管理賞」「デミング賞各賞」「日経品質管理文献賞」を次の通り決定いたしました。授賞式は11月9日(水)17:30～18:00に、同受賞記念祝賀会は同日18:00～19:00に、東京・大手町の経団連会館で開催予定です。また、同日に、授賞式に先立ちまして、受賞者による受賞報告講演会を13:00～16:45に開催予定です。 11月9日(水)の行事詳細につきましては、こちらをご参照ください。

1.日本品質管理賞


	Rane TRW Steering Systems Limited, Steering Gear Division (インド) 　Mr. Harish Lakshman, Managing Director

2.デミング賞本賞

桜井　正光　氏
株式会社リコー　取締役会長執行役員

3.デミング賞実施賞

Sanden Vikas （India） Limited(インド)
　Mr. Naveen Agarwal, Executive Director & COO

The CPAC Roof Tile Company Limited(タイ)
　Mr. Noppadol Gaewthabthim, Managing Director

Unimicron Technology Corporation (台湾)
　Mr. T. J. Tseng, Chairman & CEO

4.日経品質管理文献賞

「RとRコマンダーではじめる実験計画法」
「フリーソフトウェアＲによる統計的品質管理入門第２版」
「RとRコマンダーではじめる多変量解析」

荒木　孝治編著
　発行所：株式会社日科技連出版社

　　編著：荒木　孝治　氏（関西大学商学部教授）

王雲五關於 analytic 的字典說明

2011-10-18T05:25:00.000-07:00

在禪宗未起以前，印度便有「瑜伽」，梵文為 yoga。此字是印度文與日耳曼文的混合語，在英文中為牛軛，引申起來，是管束的意思。即如何才能管束我們的心，訓練我們的心，使心完全向某一方向走，而能於身體上、精神上和知識上發生好的結果。

我前幾天查幾本辭典 yoga語原都是
[Hindi, from Sanskrit yogaḥ, union, joining.]
然而我以前在王雲五關於 analytic 的字典說明赫然發現他用的意思正是Deming 所用的
所以我想去查胡適為何如此這是太明顯的問題我想去查1911年的大英
今天一查日本辭典果然

[jóugə]

[名][U]((時にY-))《ヒンズー教》瑜伽(ゆが), ヨーガ

yogas of ...
何年もの….

［ヒンディ語←サンスクリットyoga（結合）. △YOKE¹］

yo・gic〔jóuik〕

[形]

yó・gism

[名]

紐約市不再採"最低標制"並造成一些好設計....A Quiet Revolution Reshapes New York

2011-10-11T05:24:00.000-07:00

A Quiet Revolution Reshapes New York

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

In a shift from a time when the city hired only the lowest bidders for projects, dozens of new city buildings have been designed by gifted architects.

Architecture Review

New York’s Public Architecture Gets a Face-Lift

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

The Children's Library Discovery Center in Jamaica, Queens, is one of dozens of libraries, firehouses, police precincts and museums that have been built or refurbished by the city's Department of Design and Construction. More Photos »

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

Published: October 10, 2011

It was business as usual when I stopped at the Queens Central Library in downtown Jamaica the other morning. Visitors were nosing through racks of dog-eared best sellers, schmoozing near the circulation desk and peering into banks of computers on long tables in the lobby.

Multimedia

SLIDE SHOW: Children’s Library Discovery Center

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Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

The new Children's Library Discovery Center, part of the Queens Central Library, was designed by 1100 Architect, with an interior by Lee H. Skolnick Architecture. The building is an example of a trend in hiring prominent firms for public projects. More Photos »

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Across the room, beneath “Discover!” in red lettering, light poured through a large candy-colored doorway opening onto a new addition, a children’s science center. Immaculate and all white, the place gave off the cheery, vaguely techno vibe of a Swatch shop on the Ginza.

Designed by 1100 Architect with an interior by Lee H. Skolnick Architecture & Design Partnership, the Children’s Library Discovery Center, as it’s called, is part of a quiet revolution reshaping the city’s public architecture. Piecemeal across the five boroughs, New York is gradually being remade.

These changes come largely thanks to David J. Burney, a polite Englishman who has lived here for 30-odd years and, since 2004, has been Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s commissioner for the Department of Design and Construction. Under him, and mostly under the radar, dozens of new and refurbished libraries, firehouses, emergency medical stations, police precincts, homeless processing centers and museums have been designed by gifted and occasionally famous architects. Taken together, they have brought fresh architectural standards to the city’s infrastructure and, often, to poor, middle- and working-class neighborhoods that have long been overlooked.

It’s a big change from decades ago, when city bureaucrats considered good design a costly frill. The quality of construction was allowed to suffer to serve the bottom line. This message of official indifference contributed to a climate of public skepticism about government and the city that, in turn, dimmed expectations for urban improvements, large or small.

And it’s the small things, after all — some greenery, good lighting, well-maintained sidewalks and well-made buildings — that shape our perceptions of where we live, whether or not we’re always conscious of them.

“The little interventions add up,” is how Mr. Burney put it to me recently. The projects his department has been overseeing aspire to improve the general quality of street life and, in a few cases, tip the balance in neglected corners of the city. For instance, an E.M.S. station on Bond Street in Brooklyn, by Beyhan Karahan Architects, has added eyes on the street to what had been a fairly deserted and derelict stretch near the Gowanus Canal. The area has become safer since.

A century ago Gilded Age patrons, inspired by progressive ideas, enlisted lions of Beaux-Arts architecture to devise landmark schools, firehouses and police stations throughout the city. Andrew Carnegie distributed branch libraries — raised like temples or courthouses a few steps above the street, with stony facades and lofty reading rooms — to serve the masses as silent palaces for public improvement.

Today libraries double as centers for the elderly and toddler playrooms. They’re safe after-school havens for teenagers of working parents, with rooms set aside that are stocked with computers and, at a few branches, like the Rockaways, even with recording studios.

Libraries have also learned from retailers like Starbucks and Barnes & Noble about what people expect when they leave their homes to go someplace public to sit and read. Libraries have become modern town squares and gathering places; they offer millions of New Yorkers employment counseling, English-language classes and, crucially, Internet access. Quiet rooms, like those Carnegie built, tend to be smaller and set aside these days, almost like smoking sections in airports.

Is that a bad thing? Times change. Research libraries still survive. To imagine that libraries could remain as they were half a century ago would entail wishing away the Web and the demands of old people, immigrants, the unemployed, schoolchildren and parents who want constructive places to keep their young children occupied at a time when public resources and political good will are in increasingly short supply.

“We need to be less introverted,” is how Thomas W. Galante, the chief executive officer of the Queens Library, summed up the challenge for libraries today.

The Discovery Center, which he oversaw and raised $30 million to build, occupies what used to be the site of a nightclub on a corner lot next to the Central Library. At two stories, it is scaled to match the mix of low-rises in the area, although its shiny, sleek facade of textured and opaque glass makes it look about as inconspicuous in this context as Angelina Jolie at a Wendy’s drive-through.

A 22,000-square-foot glass box, the center comes with a wonderland interior by Mr. Skolnick’s firm. Its sculptured central stairway, encouraging people to walk rather than take the elevator, links easy-to-decipher displays of planets and animals that show different parts of the science collection.

The aging Central Library building next door, by York & Sawyer from 1966 and trimmed in limestone and granite, is by comparison a glum, modernist affair, conceived to face down the bus depot and commercial strip across Merrick Boulevard. Its interior is mostly concealed from passers-by.

The Discovery Center is the opposite: all transparency and nonchalance. Its facade, pierced by large windows opening the interior to the street, and vice versa, glows as day turns to night, acting like a beacon in the neighborhood and redefining a humdrum, bus-clogged block.

The new building illustrates what can happen when architects, even without an outsize budget, have a creative agenda and a supportive client. When New York authorities used to hire only the lowest bidders for projects, good architects didn’t bother to compete. There was no one in government who would watch their backs. That proved costlier for the public in the long run.

“All the money the city thought it saved, it lost,” Mr. Burney told me, “because projects were often left unfinished or in disrepair. People tend to think design means more money. But the truth is that the tighter the budget, the more expertise you need to squeeze something good out of the process.”

This was the argument he took to Mayor Bloomberg’s budget crunchers. After a dozen years as chief architect for the New York City Housing Authority, and as the first architect to take over the Department of Design and Construction, he was hired by the mayor with a mandate to create a Design and Construction Excellence program, along the lines of a federal plan, that brought better design to government buildings, starting in the mid-1990s.

The New York program reaches out to good architects, guaranteeing them market-rate fees. It sets aside money for projects — under $10 million at first, and now $15 million — for small firms, to encourage fresh ideas and young talent in the city. Crucially, it appoints project managers whose sole task is safeguarding design through construction when “the risk,” as Mr. Burney put it, “is that because budgets and schedules can be quantified, but design can’t, design is always the first place people look to cut.”

Mr. Skolnick echoed that thought the other day. “Those of us who went into architecture to do some public good felt that if you didn’t go into the public realm, you weren’t doing your job,” he said. “But for years you were hesitant to take on projects with the city because you knew there would be trouble. With David, it’s all changed now.”

It’s changing, certainly. At the corner of Mulberry and Jersey streets in SoHo, I stopped in at the Mulberry Street Branch Library, another public library that opened a few years back. It fills a storefront and two floors below ground in a former chocolate factory. On a tight budget of about $7 million, Rogers Marvel Architects, the firm hired by the New York Public Library and overseen by Mr. Burney’s department, restored the building’s old cast-iron columns, masonry walls and timber beams, and inserted a stairwell to bring daylight and at least a partial view of the street to the subterranean levels. Separate areas were carved out downstairs for teenagers and for toddlers, and a reading room with a tall ceiling was devoted to adults who want peace and quiet.

It’s a modest project, and that reading room seemed to me like the bottom of a well when it was empty that morning. But then I returned in the late afternoon. The teenage and toddler areas were bustling, the desks in the reading room all taken, and the benches beneath the big plate-glass windows on the ground floor occupied by older people mulling over shelves of DVDs. The place felt warm and welcoming.

Like the center in Queens, the SoHo library, easily overlooked when public attention tends toward more glamorous projects, points toward something larger than itself. It is a reminder that humane cities don’t reserve quality architecture just for rich people, that small urban improvements help everyone because city neighborhoods are interdependent.

And that governments actually do get things right sometimes.

2011年華人Deming 學院年會

2011-10-09T05:36:00.000-07:00

10月9日10點鐘
新會議地址：台北市新生南路三段88號2樓
電話：（02） 23650127

鍾漢清
Hanching Chung (or HC/ hc)

-----
朋友們上回在新北投聚會是2007年呢 (其實是2008年底和Bill Scherkenbach.....)
2008-2010 我們都在品質學會與東海大學 今年回到90年代中開始的老地方
時間和地點就暫定為:

2011年 華人Deming 學院年會

主題：一些心得交換（歡迎新朋友參加）

日期：10月9日（周日）0900-1900

地點：華人戴明博士研習中心
《新北投新民路一巷5號 6樓（過新民國中在新民路 25號後，左轉十公尺「貴園別莊」內；Tel. 02-2894 6100 ）：開車很方便　附近新民國中巷有許多停車位》。捷運 (往)「淡水線」，在「北投站」下（不出站），直接過月台，轉「新北投」線即到。

費用：免費；自行負擔午/晚餐

報名：hcsimonl@gmail.com

現在還不知道那些人來報告
不過我肯定可以講還沒出書的 "領導學與學習"
另外晃三兄說不定會來分享他上學期新開發的課程
and so on...

---

截至目前只您報名
不過牛頓可以對空室演講.....

Sir Isaac Newton 1642-1727
Isaac was a teacher at the fine college of Cambridge. Isaac was not very popular there, though. Most of the kids there thought Isaac was crazy. Isaac would sometimes teach to an empty classroom because of those reasons. Even some mocked him.

---

---2007 的聚合

感謝：
Kevin Lin 周六從台中來鼓勵買"戴明領導手冊"多本
Justing Kuo 周日從台中來送好茶 (Kevin說它的可運作定義是什麼)
徐歷昌先生從楊梅來請我們客家料理
熊先生(Peter)的午餐客家菜鈦金屬產業
翁先生的Toyota 與Deming之故事.....

2007年 華人Deming 學院年會

主題：我們這年的心得交換（歡迎新朋友參加）

日期：10月14日（周日）0900-1900

費用：免費；自行負擔午/晚餐

***

戴久永來10:00-14:00 他發表持續改善
與yy 和他在新月台午餐
送他一本初戀

我跟戴老師講許多雜學包括胡適當商務印書館的顧問的故事

談些美國的社會制度等有很多值得研究的包括許多很有特色的小大學.......
戴明許多批評美國的制度的地方都可以深入從另一方面來了解美國
以美國的總統學為例

中共舉行辛亥革命100週年紀念大會，此前被傳病危的中共前總書記江澤民現身主席台上。

這則故事可以提美國的總統例
美國的小羅斯福總統任內12年都沒邀請前任總統胡佛回百宮
直到杜魯門總統才再邀Hoover 總統他致詞時早已老淚縱橫......
這是杜魯門的優點之一

杜魯門重建白宮
美國總統學相當複雜，我們很難入其堂廟。我看過 Truman (1884-1972 )的電影和傳記名著：McCullough, David Born名著《杜魯門》(Truman ,1992） (台北：麥田，1995）。不過，讀者如我，需要指引為什麼傳主是Peter Drucker 先生說最偉大的總統。讀了它，你會知道台灣政壇之腐敗可能是小巫。不過我們或許缺乏這樣一批人馬：「馬歇爾說，他（杜魯門）的正直與清廉，在20世紀的美國領袖中無出其右。」（HC）

讀McCullough著《杜魯門》，有許多事情出乎意外。譬如說，小羅斯福總統很少與其副座見面、溝通，最後他還是過世了……比較英國邱吉爾帶反對黨領袖參加國際會議………Truman是少數的白宮過客而投入心力重建它，希望它經得起千年之利用— 建商說至少500年不成問題。
比較: 士林官邸成為開發公司的作品。

Tai 老師的持續改善中說
立平衡記分卡的一項是友誼: 要問多交多少新朋友
我認為這是中老年人的一大課題.....

(我上月參加真理堂開的日語班才知道陳其寬老師的全面設計我想很不錯認識一些老人朋友.....)
----

戴久永老師與他玄奘大學的學生出遊處
他說車站前有人可雙手寫對聯每幅三百五十功夫不錯

勝興值得一遊

她女兒在美國的華航上班 (她去東京遊學半年取得日語2級檢定....) 我才知道乞丐票---

2011/10/9 戴老師說他以前到 bbc 中文網看過
英國窮有些圖書館必須關閉討論者有一計說要將該圖書館的書都借出來
看它如果關閉

我用"bbc 中文網英國圖書館關閉" 查不到相關資訊
----

2011年10月9

我與戴久永老師說 Simon 希望他的太太的起碼條件是: 懂得微積分....

她 DOROTHY的確是補修Calculus .....

然後我們討論為什麼Simon 要立此條件

我當然有我的理論可惜Simon 生前沒問他這要求....

與戴老師討論Calculus 之意義和經驗..... 數學系出身的他對台灣百萬人學過微積分卻完成不知所云的浪費或許很不以為然

Herbert Simon 說 DOROTHY/ 微積分

---

英國的科學--幾個重要的硏究機關: Rothamsted

這是一本好書雖然各組織只講至1940年而已英國的科學--幾個重要的硏究機關:
皇家學院48頁/ 格林威基皇家天文台 45頁/ 英國的農業研究--樂桑斯特實驗站* 30頁

馬丁(Thomas Martin), 準兹(Harold Spencer Jones),拉塞爾(John E. Russell)撰
李曉舫譯臺一版臺北市|c臺灣商務 1976 [6],126面|d18公分
人人文庫|v2197-2198

*
Rothamsted (rŏth'əmstĭd), world's oldest and England's most important agricultural experiment station, now the main center of the Institute of Arable Crops Research (IACR). It was founded in 1843 by John Bennet Lawes on his estate at Harpenden, in Hertfordshire, where he had been experimenting with fertilizers. In 1842 a patent had been granted him for the development of superphosphate-bone meal, or calcium phosphate, treated with sulfuric acid-an artificial fertilizer, which his factory soon produced in large quantities. The station continued experimenting with fertilizers and expanded its activities to include crop-production studies and animal nutrition experiments. Expansions started in 1902 provided new facilities and added to the staff botanists, bacteriologists, chemists, and writers, which increased the value of the station to Great Britain's varied agricultural interests, distributed as they were throughout the world. In 1934 a public appeal brought forth the funds needed to buy the grounds used by the station. The experimental work, which had once been financed entirely by Lawes, came to be sustained by government grants, supplemented by private contributions. In 1987 Rothamsted, the Long Ashton Research Station, and Broom's Barn Experimental Station merged to form the IACR. An important function of the institute now is the training of postgraduate research workers.http://www.answers.com/topic/rothamsted

我跟Tai老師解釋 Rothamsted 的悠久歷史(1843- )
我們所熟悉的故事Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher FRS (1890 –1962R. A. Fisher, the life of a scientist by Joan Fis...) 在此任職 Rothamsted 自1919始
他在那兒發展出實驗計畫學

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/ronald-fisher#ixzz1aHEhz6Uf

更有意思的是Deming 在1935年到英國學習一年上過Fisher 的課
在數位化的Fisher 檔案中有篇論文cc給 Deming
Deming 那年的留學之旅的資料可能都還在美國國會圖書館
他只簡單提過 Fisher 在倫敦大學的教室昏暗 Fisher 在黑版上導證明時也常常出錯
不過全世界的人都會到此一流的人處去求教
因為他們想知道最了不起的心靈正在思考什麼.....

2011年華人Deming 學院年會會前的感想

2011-10-08T16:48:00.000-07:00

"我剛剛讀一下 Out of the Crisis 第2章還是有收穫...." 昨晚的信
這本書有許多批評時事的例證
我覺得可以反過來看美國等國家的各種制度
譬如說以下的核能事業的檢驗
美國對於歷任總統的研究
Deming 認為最重要的領導者要了解各種measurements 不要誤以為什麼都可歸因於"特殊因"

江澤民出席中共辛亥革命紀念大會
中共舉行辛亥革命100週年紀念大會，此前被傳病危的中共前總書記江澤民現身主席台上。

這則故事可以提美國的總統例
美國的小羅斯福總統任內12年都沒邀請前任總統胡佛回百宮
直到杜魯門總統才再邀Hoover 總統他致詞時早已老淚縱橫......
這是杜魯門的優點之一

日常生活的實例。我們可以以歷任美國總統的表現為例子來說明。美國歷任總統的表現，有半數是在平均數以上(取自 San Diego Union1983年2月11日的p. C-2版。

以下是由Bob Dvor-chak所蒐集史學家為美國歷任領導者的評分：

「總之，我們很幸運有週半數的總統，其領導能力在平均數以上。」obertrt K.Muray 在統計970份歷史學家回答的問卷後，這樣說。

「想想我們選舉總統的方法那樣地不嚴謹，就可知道我們是何等的幸運。根據歷史學家評定，大約有四分之一的總統是偉大的，或近乎偉大的，並且有過半數的表現在平均數以上。」賓州州立大學的一位歷史學教授這樣說。

注意:”偉大”指的是評分的前25% 。

以下是一些因未能建立領導體系，而導致混亂的例子。

請思索一下核能管理委員會(Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NRC)所寫的報告(《華爾街日報》1981年9月14日。我是從 New York Statistician 1982年5-6月號讀到這的。)

“核能管理委員會研究評定15座核能電廠「低於平均水準」

華盛頓一全國50座核能發電廠中，有15座核能反應器在核能委員會的「報告卡」上未能通過，聯邦檢查員將做詳細的檢查。

核能管理委員會職員根據去年年底的研究結果，發現有15座核能發電廠總體績效低於平均水準，包括維護、放射線與消防以及管理控制。

核能管理委員會發言人說：「……本研究之目的在於，確保我們的檢查重心放在績效低於平均水準的工廠上。」”

核能管理委員會(NRC)報告上的「低於平均水準」顯然是表示不滿意，這種定義並不清楚。很顯然的核能管理委員會在某機關出問題(與眾不同)上，並沒有參考我們在第三章和第十一章所談的。它沒有提出方案來使所有電廠不斷地進行改善。

核能發電廠或其他機構的監督系統，目的應該是改善所有的工廠。不論這個監督工作如何成功，總會有幾家工廠在平均水準下。而特定的補救措施應該針對那些由統計檢定後所指出的不合格工廠。

另一例子(某位行銷經理向作者提供)。某汽車公司在Dayton有三家經銷商。其中一家業績低於這三家的平均水準，其績效顯然很差。必須採取行動，也許應該催他把公司賣掉，這樣我們可以找別人來接替。

本書處處都會談到改善領導的方法。

再一個例子。是棒球工會的官員，面對選手的薪水仍有半數低於中位數的處理方式。(Brian Joiner 舉Wisconsin State Journal 1983 年3月11日的例子。)

“工會的官員說，儘管所得增加，仍有半數以上的棒球聯盟選手的收入，低於全聯盟年薪中位數＄75,000美元。

事實上，下一步應該是把較低收入的半數提高到中位數，或者至少使半數較低收入者的人數減半。”

另一個例子。我有一位住在南非普勒多利亞的朋友告訴我說，他小女兒的老師打電話給他說，他的女兒在兩次考試中都低於平均分數。他告訴老師說連續八次考試不及格才要受到關切，而不是兩次。可是我們還是非常感謝老師的好意。

我最近在某一個國家工作，在他們的教育制度中，15歲的小孩都要參加畢業考試，這項考試只有半數的學生能通過。可是他們的「徵人啟事」中卻常常明確標示要有「畢業證書」。這種評分制度使半數的畢業生沒有辦法在社會上謀生。

某家旅館為了使旅客放心，告訴旅客說，服務生要對房間內所有的毛巾床單負實。換句話說，服務生要對他人帶走的房間內物品負責。這是不是建立員工忠誠與信賴的好方法？

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them,”

2011-10-06T00:35:00.000-07:00

這種創新觀“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them,”
與Dr. Deming 類似

His on-stage persona as a Zen-like mystic notwithstanding, Mr Jobs was an autocratic manager with a fierce temper. But his egomania was largely justified. He eschewed market researchers and focus groups, preferring to trust his own instincts when evaluating potential new products. “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them,” he said. His judgment proved uncannily accurate: by the end of his career the hits far outweighed the misses. Mr Jobs was said by an engineer in the early years of Apple to emit a “reality distortion field”, such were his powers of persuasion. But in the end he changed reality, channelling the magic of computing into products that reshaped music, telecoms and media. The man who said in his youth that he wanted to “put a ding in the universe” did just that.

Systemic failure, 《双河灣》引發的一次因緣

2011-09-17T00:47:00.000-07:00

systemic, inconsistencies, exemplify, “there they ...

FT社評：“流氓活動”更可怕
Leader_Systemic failure in investment banks
英國《金融時報》 Lex專欄

The timing of UBS's $2bn loss at the hands of a single trader could not have been better for supporters of profound banking reforms such as those proposed by the UK's Vickers review. It could also not have come at a worse time for European banks, again in the grip of uncertainty. We must hope that the former outweighs the latter.

瑞銀(UBS)一名交易員一手造成了20億美元虧損。對於支持徹底改革銀行業（比如英國的維克斯(Vickers)報告提出的那些改革措施）的人士而言，這件事出現的時機再合適不過了。但對於再次陷入動盪局面的歐洲銀行業而言，這件事出現的時機卻再糟糕不過了。我們當然希望，這件事的積極影響超過消極影響。

Whatever else Kweku Adoboli, the UBS trader arrested in connection with the loss, has done, he has tilted the politics of banking regulation to the reformers' advantage. The revelations come on the third anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. Everywhere, those who feel that bankers got away with reckless endangerment must be thinking: “there they go again”.

不管因涉嫌造成上述虧損而被捕的瑞銀交易員科維庫•阿多波利(Kweku Adoboli)還做了些什麼，他已經讓圍繞銀行業監管的政治鬥爭倒向了對改革者有利的一邊。這件事被曝光，正值雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)破產三週年。在全球各個角落，那些認為銀行家並沒有因其不計後果的危險行為而受到處罰的人肯定在想：“他們又犯老毛病了”。

That is in part true, but only in part. $2bn is an enormous sum of money and losing it is a big scandal for UBS. But the number needs to be seen in context. It barely amounts to four per cent of UBS's $54bn of shareholder's equity. By itself this is not large enough to break the bank – but the knock-on effects on UBS's businesses might be – let alone the financial system. The global economy was wrecked not by supposed individual “rogue traders” but by a systemic and systematic failure to understand the exposures banks were consciously taking on – exemplified by UBS's $50bn losses on mortgage-backed securities just a few years ago.

這種觀點在一定程度上是正確的，但只是一定程度上。 20億美元是一大筆錢，這筆虧損對瑞銀而言是一樁重大醜聞。但我們必須從整體角度看待這個數字。它僅相當於瑞銀540億美元股東權益的4%。就這個數字自身而言，它還沒有大到足以毀滅該行的程度（雖然此事對瑞銀業務造成的連鎖影響可能會拖垮這家銀行），更別提毀滅整個金融體係了。全球經濟之所以遭受重創，罪魁禍首並不是人們口中的一個個“流氓交易員”，而是要歸咎於一點，即人們仍然無法系統地、有條理地理解銀行主動承擔的風險敞口。幾年前，瑞銀在抵押貸款支持證券(MBS)上的500億美元虧損就是一個典型的例子。

Moreover, the “rogue trader” label should be taken with a pinch of salt. It is not yet known what sorts of internal risk management rules at UBS were broken, if any. But that “Delta One” desks such as the one Mr Adoboli worked on can cause losses is evident. Placed in a grey area between proprietary and for-client trading, these desks deploy client assets to match certain benchmarks for their customers – tracking the price of gold, for example. Any excess profits generated by providing that exposure can be kept by the bank: a perfect incentive to take on extra risk with the bank's own balance sheet. Whether or not Mr Adoboli broke internal rules or external laws, taking such risks insofar as legally possible is what investment banks are set up do . If “rogue traders” are problem, “rogue activity” is a bigger one.

另外，我們應該帶著懷疑的態度看待“流氓交易員”這類指控。目前尚不清楚，這件事違反了瑞銀哪類內部風險管理規定——假如真的違反了的話。但是，阿多波利所在的“Delta One”部門有可能造成虧損，這一點是顯而易見的。該部門的交易介於自營交易和代客交易之間的灰色區域，對客戶資產進行配置以匹配某些基準，比方說追踪金價。通過提供這一風險敞口而獲得的所有額外盈利都可被該行保留：這是對利用銀行自身資產負債表承擔更多風險的絕好激勵。不管阿多波利違反的是內部規定還是外部法律，“只要法律上可行就要去承擔這類風險”正是投行業一直奉行的。如果“流氓交易員”是一個問題的話，那麼“流氓活動”則是一個更大的問題。

So the UBS scandal mainly confirms what we already know. The narrow lesson is that derivatives can conceal risk as well as manage it. The broad lesson is that inherently risky investment banking, must not be allowed to contaminate utility banking or the wider economy. It is a call to speed up efforts to increase investment banks' capital buffers and the ease with which they can be resolved if the buffers are worn through. If this is done, the risks investment banks take on and the gains and losses that ensue are largely a matter between banks and their shareholders – provided that shareholders are not defrauded or misled.

因此，瑞銀這樁醜聞證實了我們已經知道的一些事情。狹義的教訓是，衍生品的確可用來管理風險，但它本身也隱藏著風險。廣義的教訓則是，決不能允許天生高風險的投行業危及公用事業銀行業或更廣泛的經濟。因此，我們有必要加快努力，增加投行的資本金緩衝層，並在這些緩衝耗盡的情況下減小投行的解體難度。如果做到了這些，投行承擔的風險以及隨之帶來的收益和損失，基本上就成為銀行及其股東之間的事情——前提是股東沒有遭到欺騙或誤導。

This, however, is not the situation we are in.,The UBS scandal will have repercussions. Most obviously on UBS itself – with its reputation badly damaged by its subprime losses, this additional blow will make things harder for its private wealth management business. And by bringing home how little we know about the bodies buried in banks' balance sheets, it will fuel scepticism of other banks – especially in the eurozone, where market pressures are intense (even if they lifted a bit after Thursday's joint central bank intervention) .

然而，這並非我們現在所處的形勢。瑞銀這樁醜聞肯定會造成影響。最為明顯的是對瑞銀本身的影響——其聲望曾因次貸損失遭受重創，這次的打擊將令其私人財富管理業務的日子更為艱難。我們認識到，我們對於銀行資產負債表內隱藏的情況知之甚少，這將讓我們對其它銀行產生懷疑，特別是在市場承受強大壓力的歐元區的銀行（儘管在周四全球五大央行聯手干預後，這種壓力減輕了一些）。

The biggest questions raised by the affair are for Switzerland. The country that prides itself on conservatism in dealing with money has been losing patience with the risk-taking culture of investment banks. It may find that even the “Swiss finish” to Basel III capital rules is not enough to protect its public finances against losses.

此事引發的最大問題是針對瑞士的。這個曾以在資金處理方面走保守路線為傲的國家，正在對投行的冒險文化失去耐心。這個國家可能會發現，即便瑞士實行比《巴塞爾協議III》(Basel III)更為嚴格的資本金規定（瑞士終結方案，Swiss finish），也不足以保護其公共金融不受損失。

Cultures are difficult to regulate by edict, but they do evolve when the environment changes. To get investment banking culture under control, a good start would be for everyone to stop subsidising it.

文化很難通過法令來監管，但它們可以隨著環境的變化而變化。要想管控投行文化，大家就要停止對它的補貼——這將是一個良好的開始。

譯者/梁艷裳

《双河灣》引發的一次因緣

今天在聯經架上看到每本約90元的《双河灣》
這月刊以前都是贈送
約2008年4月有一則報導某印刷廠的文章
我去詢問價格很合理
那年暑假好友 Bill Scherkenbach 在光寶公司當副總經理
我們想法辦講座出書

台灣戴明圈：2008年東海戴明學者講座 ii (再續前緣)

j
http://demingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/01/2008-ii.html

不過因為一些技術問題沒給那家印刷場印 (錯失在我方)
2009年我們仍要出書再打電話給代理人不過她已離職了

Japan’s tsunami supply chain comeback

2011-09-15T22:19:00.000-07:00

這篇沒提到的更長遠的對於災區的投資包括設新廠等努力.....

日本供應鏈的活力
Japan’s tsunami supply chain comeback
作者：東京大學教授喬治•奧爾科特, 愛丁堡大學商學院負責人尼克•奧利弗為英國《金融時報》撰稿

After the paralysis of the global supply chain caused by the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March, there have been the inevitable calls for a rethink of global, just-in-time supply systems. Some predicted that the disruption would last until the end of the year, if not longer. But just four months on, Japan's recovery is taking place with remarkable speed, in large part because of the unusual brand of co-operative capitalism that underpins the tight-knit and remarkably resilient Japanese business system.

在3月份日本那場毀滅性地震和海嘯導致全球供應鏈陷入癱瘓後，人們不由得發出呼籲：重新思考全球準時制(JIT)供應鏈系統。一些人曾預測，供應鏈中斷的局面將持續到今年年底，甚至更晚。然而，災難發生後僅4個月，日本就以令人矚目的速度開始了復甦。這很大程度上是因為日本獨特的合作資本主義為該國環環相扣、復原能力超強的商業體系提供了支撐。

July's figures revealed that Japan's industrial production had risen for the third month in a row, with auto manufacturers reviving especially strongly. Mitsubishi Electric also announced better than expected first-quarter profits, and has revised upwards its earnings estimates for this year. Other companies have responded strongly too: Hitachi, much of whose domestic production capacity is located in the area most affected, was almost fully operational by the end of March, while Hitachi Port, crippled by the disasters, reopened on April 3.

7月份數據顯示，日本工業產值連續第三個月實現增長，其中汽車製造業的複蘇尤為強勁。三菱電機(Mitsubishi Electric)公佈的第一季度營利數據好於預期，該企業還調高了今年的收益預估。其他企業的表現同樣強勁：日立(Hitachi)在本土的生產線大部分都位於受災最嚴重的地區，但到3月底，就已幾乎全面恢復運營，一度因受災而陷入癱瘓的日立港口也於4月3日重新開放。

Held in awe by many in the west in the 1980s, Japan's system has until recently fallen out of favour for being slow to adjust to changing macroeconomic conditions, resulting in the country's two lost decades. Yet the tsunami has actually revealed the system's capacity for rapid recovery – just as it did following the 1995 Kobe earthquake, and the 2007 Chuetsu earthquake.

上世紀80年代，日本的商業體系令西方國家許多人嘆為觀止，直到近些年，這一體系才漸漸失去了人們的青睞，因為它對不斷變化的宏觀經濟環境反應遲緩，導致日本出現了兩個“失去的十年”。然而，海嘯發生後，這一體系顯示出支持經濟迅速復甦的強大能力，正如1995年神戶地震和2007年新潟(Chuetsu)地震之後的情況一樣。

Many of the current supply problems are due to damage at a plant belonging to electronics group Renesas, in Hitachinaka. The plant, jointly owned by NEC, Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric, produces a significant share of the world's automotive microcontroller chips. The parent firms have sent hundreds of staff to help with the recovery, but, more interestingly, Renesas's customers are helping out too, with Toyota, Honda and others dispatching staff to help with recovery efforts. At one point, there were nearly 3,000 non-Renesas employees at the plant, mostly engineers. As a result production restarted on June 1, much earlier than first anticipated. By late September production should be back to pre-quake levels.

目前供應方面依然存在的問題中，許多都是因為電子集團瑞薩(Renesas)旗下一家位於常陸那珂(Hitachinaka)的工廠嚴重受損。該工廠的股東還有日本電氣(NEC)、日立和三菱電機，全球相當一部分自動微控芯片都產自這裡。這些母公司派出了數百名員工協助恢復工作的進行，但更有趣的是，瑞薩的客戶們也伸出了援手——豐田(Toyota)、本田(Honda)和其他企業也派出人手來協助。該工廠一度有近3000名非瑞薩員工在幫忙，其中大部分是工程師。因此，工廠6月1日就恢復了生產，比最初的預計提前了許多。到9月底，其生產應該可以恢復地震前水平。

This pattern, in which usually fierce competitors have come quickly to each others' aid, has been repeated elsewhere. Take Hitachi Chemical, which has two factories at Namie, a short distance from the Fukushima nuclear station. One plant produces carbon brushes for heavy- duty electric motors, which are used in vital public infrastructure. Kazuyuki Tanaka, Hitachi Chemical's chief executive, has noted that restarting production was more important than revealing “some important parts of our knowhow to our competitors”. Here, as at Renesas, help has been offered, and accepted, without contracts and without discussion of financial arrangements.

平日里競爭激烈的對手迅速相互施以援手，這種情形在日本其它地方也很普遍。就拿日立化成工業(Hitachi Chemical)來說，它在距離福島第一核電站(Fukushima)不遠處的浪江町(Namie)有兩家工廠，其中一家生產用於重型電動機（用於必不可少的公共基礎設施建設）的碳刷。日立化成工業首席執行官田中一之(Kazuyuki Tanaka)就曾表示，恢復生產比“保護我們的重要技術不被洩露給競爭對手”更重要。這里和瑞薩工廠的情形一樣，在接到其他企業的援助並決定接受的整個過程中，沒有簽訂任何合同，也沒有人討論費用該如何分配。

There has of course been major disruption, despite the speedy recovery. Even a few weeks of lost production is too much for the global clients of major Japanese companies to bear. A range of strategies are therefore being developed to improve resilience, including greater diversification of production and new arrangements to transfer design and production information across manufacturing sites. These will apply to facilities within companies, but also now may include formal agreements with competitors to provide substitute facilities in the event of a future disaster.

儘管恢復速度很快，但生產必然受到了嚴重的阻斷。對於日本各大企業的全球客戶來說，這些企業哪怕停產幾週，造成的損失也讓它們難以承受。因此，人們正構想一系列戰略，以增強復原能力，其中包括提高生產分散程度，並為各個廠址間設計和生產信息的轉移做出一些新的安排。這些新策略將應用於企業內部的各個工廠，但如今也有可能推及至與競爭對手的正式協議——以便在未來發生災難時提供後備工廠。

In spite of this, and especially given the speed at which supply chains have bounced back, there is little sign that Japanese companies are planning to turn their backs on their traditional “just in time” manufacturing strategies, let alone leave Japan entirely. Professor Takahiro Fujimoto of the University of Tokyo, an expert on supply chains and the automotive industry, admits that improving supply chain resilience must be a priority, but believes this can be done without “sacrificing competitiveness”.

儘管如此，尤其是考慮到供應鏈恢復的速度，沒有多少跡象表明日本企業打算拋棄它們傳統的準時制生產戰略，更不用說徹底搬離日本了。供應鍊及汽車製造業專家、東京大學(University of Tokyo)教授藤本隆宏(Takahiro Fujimoto)坦承，改善供應鏈的複原能力應放在重中之重，但他認為，這不需要“犧牲競爭力”就能實現。

The tsunami has graphically demonstrated how co-operative capitalism allows rapid mobilisation of resources and offers a hidden source of resilience to efficient but vulnerable supply chains. It now seems clear that the latest crisis has strengthened, not weakened, Japan's distinctive form of capitalism.

日本海嘯生動地說明了合作資本主義是如何快速調動資源、並為高效但脆弱的供應鏈提供復原力的秘密之源的。現在，有一點看起來很清楚：這場危機是增強而非削弱了日本獨特的資本主義模式。

George Olcott is a professor at the research centre for advanced science and technology at the University of Tokyo. Nick Oliver is head of the University of Edinburgh Business School

喬治•奧爾科特(George Olcott)是東京大學尖端科學技術研究中心教授。尼克•奧利弗(Nick Oliver)是愛丁堡大學商學院(University of Edinburgh Business School)負責人。

譯者/吳蔚

敬悼趙耀東先生

2011-09-10T08:51:00.000-07:00

趙耀東在1972年在東海大學演講中鋼的創業史之清廉愛國很感動我

其實胡適之先生在1935年寫的海濱半日談－－紀念田中玉將軍

同樣的感人:...."我管軍械採辦的事.....至少替國家省去了逼千萬元的經費" (1924年田先生對胡適和丁文江說)

趙耀東口述歷史高雄縣文獻委員會出版 350元
鐵頭風雲-- 趙耀東傳奇劉玉珍著台北:聯經 1995 250元
(趙耀東出版前看過的傳記它的缺點是一般台灣傳記的問題: 無注無索引)

今天2010/4/27 公共電視說是中鋼1977年開工日

趙耀東

敬悼趙耀東先生
2008 8 21

經歷
1916民國5年生於江蘇省淮陰縣
1940 民國29年武漢大學機械系畢業
1943民國32年麻省理工學院攻讀機械工程
1950民國39年擔任中本紡織公司總經理
1951民國40年籌建台北紡織廠
1968民國57年擔任中鋼籌備處主任
1971民國60年擔任中鋼總經理
1978 民國67年升任中鋼董事長，兼任總經理
1981民國70年調任經濟部長
1984 民國73年調任行政院經建會主委
1988 民國77年轉任國策顧問

2008 8月20日病逝於台灣台北市我的一次難忘體驗：
＊我很少聽演講。這輩子印象最深刻的演講是：我1970年代初，從高禩謹先生學管理學，他講的，都是很正統的美國企業管理知識。實務方面，高先生會請他的舊部屬來演講，如趙耀東先生（中鋼公司負責人，之後當過經濟部長）的故事最感人....（演講的一些具體內容，可參考雷穎《造化遊戲四十年：雷穎回憶錄》，台北：中央研究院近代史研究所，民國88年（1999），頁175-80。當然，最重要的是親身說法，「趙鐵頭」很有說故事的魅力，讓年青人嚮往。現在，第一代中鋼員工多快退休了……）。高院長又請各行業界領導來演講「台灣的產業問題」，……. ＊當年的學生、學長，包括忠樸同寢室的，竟然是"數十年"之後再重逢，大家來去匆匆。趕回美國，趕回台北……

____四大精神是中鋼公司企業文化的基石，但經營理念則是中鋼公司企業文化的具體表現，中鋼公司的經營理念係於七十年底當時總經理傅次韓先生首次召集一級主管商討管理哲學編輯事宜，到七十三年九月彙集而成的四大經營理念，即增進社會福祉、落實實際績效、發揮群體力量、講求人性管理。

秉持「取之社會，用之社會」的態度，達成「己利利人，己達達人」的目標，確立企業存在對社會及國家的貢獻。

講求工作效率，提升經營成果，發揮整體績效，達成企業目標。

對內重視協調合作，發揮團隊精神，努力達成目標；對外與下遊業者合作、謀求共同利益，促進我國鋼鐵工業發展。

視員工為企業的寶貴資產，協助其智能提升與成長，獎勵其發揮創意與進取心，尊重其工作尊嚴，重視其應得權益，使能與公司同心，貢獻心力。

******
我不相信"代言"

不過這是一種想像

如果馬總統請益趙耀東、王永慶會說什麼？

作者：高希均

出處：2008年11月號／巴菲特滾錢人生

大家尊敬的兩位——國營的與民營的——「企業英雄」先後在8月與10月去世，這真是台灣社會的損失。1970年代起，與他們相識，已近40年。「天下文化」出版了趙耀東的《平凡的勇者》與《台塑打造石化王國——王永慶的管理世界》。所寫兩篇前言的標題就表...

大家尊敬的兩位——國營的與民營的——「企業英雄」先後在8月與10月去世，這真是台灣社會的損失。1970年代起，與他們相識，已近40年。「天下文化」出版了趙耀東的《平凡的勇者》與《台塑打造石化王國——王永慶的管理世界》。所寫兩篇前言的標題就表達了我的評價：「敢想、敢說、敢做」，與「從『大』企業家到『偉大』企業家——王永慶的企業雄心與事業良心」。

＊＊＊

2008年的秋天正是金融海嘯橫掃全球，台灣景氣受到衝擊，如果馬總統向趙王兩位請益，他們會說什麼？試以第一人稱代擬可能的答覆。

（一）趙氏的答覆

我在經濟部服務的時候，政策目標是「一切為出口」，此刻要變成「一切為成長」。八年來每人所得幾乎沒有提升，「創造」財富遠遠比財富「分配」更重要。因此我贊成減稅，也贊成對某些關鍵產業（如能源、文化、生化科技）予以扶植。要想盡一切辦法，把GNP的餅（Pie）做大，做大以後，大家就可以分到更多。

政府更要拿出魄力，以最快的速度（包括立法院的挑燈夜戰通過必要的法案），推動幾項重大工程與科技（我曾經向俞國華院長提出由我來推動捷運而未果），如桃園航空城與節約能源科技，讓民眾感受到政府動起來了。

重大政策總是要有魄力的人去做。因此，少打乖乖牌，多啟用一些有膽識的人，有熱情、有抱負；敢做事，敢拚命。

On sex, lies and the pitfalls of overblown statistics (John Kay)

2011-08-31T18:45:00.000-07:00

2011年09月01日 06:21 AM
統計數據的誤區
On sex, lies and the pitfalls of overblown statistics
作者：英國《金融時報》專欄作家約翰•凱

A visit to the International Festival of Statistics in Dublin (yes, really) prompted me to offer advice to young scholars on the interpretation and use of economic data.

參加完於都柏林舉行的國際統計節(International Festival of Statistics)——是的，真有這樣的活動——我忍不住想就對經濟數據的解讀和使用向年輕學者們提點建議。

Always ask yourself the question “where does that data come from?”. “Long distance rail travel in Britain is expected to increase by 96 per cent by 2043.” Note how the passive voice “is expected” avoids personal responsibility for this statement. Who expects this? And what is the basis of their expectation? For all I know, we might be using flying platforms in 2043, or be stranded at home by oil shortages: where did the authors acquire their insight?

永遠不忘問你自己這樣一個問題：“數據從何而來？”。 “到2043年，英國的長途鐵路旅行據預計將增長96%。”注意這裡的被動語態“據預計”是如何撇清了個人對於這一陳述的責任的。誰預計了這個增長？他們做出這一預計的根據又是什麼？就我所知，到2043年，我們可能已經在使用飛行平台了，或者因為石油短缺而被困在家裡。這句話的作者又是從哪裡獲得這種見解的呢？

“On average, men think about sex every seven seconds.” How did the researchers find this out? Did they ask men how often they thought about sex, or when they last thought about sex (3½ seconds ago, on average)? Did they give their subjects a buzzer to press every time they thought about sex? How did they confirm the validity of the responses? Is it possible that someone just made this statement up, and it has been repeated without attribution ever since? Many of the numbers I hear at business conferences have that provenance.

“男性平均每7秒就會想到性。”研究人員是如何得出這一結論的？是通過詢問男性多久會想到性，還是問他們上次想到性是什麼時候（平均3.5秒前）？他們有沒有給被採訪對像一個蜂鳴器，讓他們每次一想到性就按一下？他們如何確認那些反應的真實性？有沒有可能這不過是某個人編造出來的說法，然後就在未經求證來源的情況下被重複使用了？我在商務會議上聽到的許多數字都是這麼來的。

In more intellectual environments, the figures presented may be the product of serious analysis and calculation. Always ask of such data “what is the question to which this number is the answer?”. “Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation on a like-for-like basis before allowance for exceptional restructuring costs” is the answer to the question “what is the highest profit number we can present without attracting flat disbelief?”.

在學術性更強的環境中，人們拿出的數字也許是嚴肅分析與計算的產物。關於這些數據，永遠要問這樣一個問題，“這些數字想要回答什麼問題？”。 “不考慮預提特殊重組成本、在可比基礎上的稅息折舊及攤銷前利潤(Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation on a like-for-like basis before allowance for exceptional restructuring costs)”是要回答“在不招致嚴重懷疑的情況下，我們所能報告的最高盈利數字”這個問題嗎？

Beware explanations that are tautological: “gross domestic product is a measure of the income of the nation”, “movements of the consumer prices index reflect changes in the cost of a basket of commodities compiled by the Office for National Statistics”. Always probe descriptions – “GDP is not a measure of output, or of welfare” – that define what a statistic is not, rather than what it is. “These figures are not forecasts, and should not be relied on by prospective investors.” If they are not forecasts, then what are they, and if they are not to be relied on by prospective investors what purpose was intended in distributing the information to them?

要當心一些同義反复的解釋：“國內生產總值是衡量一國收入的指標”，“消費者價格指數變動反映的是國家統計局編制的一籃子商品的成本變化”。永遠記得深入探究界定某個統計數據不是什麼、而非是什麼的描述，比如“GDP不是衡量產出或福利的指標”；“這些數字不是預測數字，潛在投資者不應完全依賴這些數字。”如果它們不是預測數字，那是什麼；如果潛在投資者不能完全依賴這些數字，那向投資者傳遞這些信息的目的又何在？

Be careful of data defined by reference to other documents which you are expected not to have read. “These accounts have been compiled in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles”, or “these estimates are prepared in line with guidance given by HM Treasury and the Department of Transport”. Such statements are intended to give a false impression of authoritative endorsement. A data set compiled

小心那些定義中參照了其它料想你沒有讀過的文件的數據。 “這些賬目是根據普遍接受的會計原則編制的”，或者“上述估值是根據英國財政部(HM Treasury)與交通部(Department of Transport)發布的指導文件做出的”。這些陳述旨在給人們一個錯誤的印象——即它們已得到權威部門的認可。由國家性統計機構或受尊重的國際性機構（比如經濟合作與發展組織(OECD)或歐盟統計局(Eurostat)）編制的成套數據，應該是認真編制的。但這並不意味著，這些數據所包含的意思與使用它們的人所認為或所聲稱的那個意思相同。

by a national statistics organisation or a respected international institution such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development or Eurostat will have been compiled conscientiously.

當數據似乎指向一個意外的發現時，永遠記得考慮這樣一個可能性：即問題出在數據身上、而非世界本身。我最近看到了一項有關金融服務業相對生產力的研究，其中，意大利排名第一，英國與美國墊底。你或許會認為這會給我們敲響警鐘，但事實並非如此：作者接下來解釋說，差距如此之大，原因在於英美兩國金融服務業的規模。只要稍微思考一下，研究人員就應該注意到這樣一些問題，比如：”金融服務業產出的含義是什麼？“。

That does not, however, imply

但現在人們很容易不加思考就往計算機程序裡輸入數據。前文中對英國鐵路交通增長沒有根據的精確預測（96%而不是增加1倍）就暗示了，這個數字是由計算機、而非經驗豐富的證據解讀員得出。

that the numbers mean what the person using them thinks or asserts they mean.

統計數據的可靠程度，有賴於它們的出處以及使用者的能力。如果我在數據中發現了令人吃驚的東西，那最有可能的解釋是：我弄錯了。

When the data seem to point to an unexpected finding, always consider the possibility that the problem is a feature of the data, rather than a feature of the world. I recently saw a study of comparative productivity in financial services in which Italy came top and Britain and the US bottom. You might have thought alarm bells would ring, but no: the authors went on to comment that this divergence was serious because of the size of the financial services sectors of Britain and the US. A little thought might have directed the researchers' attention to questions such as “what is meant by output of financial services?”.

戴名博士在倫敦喝到牌子為Courage 的啤酒

2011-08-22T20:44:00.000-07:00

英文勇氣為courage，更是重要。所以戴名博士在倫敦喝到牌子為Courage 的啤酒，不禁說笑話，參考《戴明修煉 II》。

其實該啤酒公司的創始人之姓為 Courage

Courage & Co Ltd was started by John Courage at the Anchor Brewhouse in Horsleydown, Bermondsey in 1787.

Courage

Industry	Alcoholic beverage
Founded	1787
Founder(s)	John Courage
Products	Beer
Owner(s)	Wells & Youngs

Courage Brewery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ford's CEO, Alan Mulally 與Akio Toyoda 相遇於某機場.....

2011-08-22T20:36:00.000-07:00

兩家公司的合作想到這樣的最高主管故事
Ford Toyota Joint Venture: The Benefits of CEO Travel
Technorati
that led then Ford CEO, Donald Petersen, to bring quality/management expert Dr. W. Edwards Deming into Ford to teach them what the Japanese automobile ...

There's nothing like an unexpected meeting in an airport terminal and a quick exchange of business cards to change an industry.

Evidently, that's what happened when Ford's CEO, Alan Mulally, had a chance meeting with Toyota CEO, Akio Toyoda, in an unspecified airport as they were both on their way someplace else.

The outcome is a Memorandum of Understanding for the first joint venture the companies have ever pursued with each other. And it's on two fronts.

If the deal goes through (which will happen in 2012), the companies will co-develop a hybrid system for larger, rear-wheel drive vehicles. Like trucks and SUVs.

This is a good thing for both companies as the Obama Administration has upped the fuel efficiency requirements - and that had both companies trying to figure out how to solve the problem by the 2017 model year deadline. It's also expected to substantially reduce the purchase price of the vehicles.

It's also a nice fit for the companies as they both have successful track records with their existing hybrids - Ford with the Fusion and Toyota with the Prius.

On a secondary front, they've also agreed to collaborate on the development of industry-wide standards for the so-called "telematics" - the systems that enable drivers to track emails, make phone calls and participate in social networks while driving. According to initial reports, these are expected to be cloud-based services.

While this is the first actual venture between the two companies, in many ways this 'partnership' was years in the making. After all, it was a result of the 1980 NBC Whitepaper entitled, "If Japan Can, Why Can't We?" that led then Ford CEO, Donald Petersen, to bring quality/management expert Dr. W. Edwards Deming into Ford to teach them what the Japanese automobile makers - most notably Toyota - had learned from him years before.

通信

2011-08-19T01:55:00.000-07:00

這系列之文是是記與朋友的一些交往。

這幾天，慧玲報告Mike 的狀況；Ken 來訪，我們其實談過許多主題，少數如賴世和英譯/研究圓仁的《入唐求法[巡禮記》想成blog。

最近似乎決定不出版《領導與學習》。我最覺得對不起的是高雄的好友，他還用認購20本來鼓勵我。另外下不了來的是，Joyce Orsini 教授的序文早就送到。所以現在還在努力…..

今午林公來電，也談了許多事，就順便記在這兒。

林公說我有沒興趣取得品質學會的個人獎？這實在是很尷尬的問題：因為它要給的「他」(即，我) ，應該是1982-85年的我才對。我建議林公，務必把各種獎，送到得講者可以有激勵作用的年青的業者手中。我跟他說ASQ 的榮譽會員才是世界肯定 (昔日Kondo/ Kano 等教授得此，在日本都辦慶祝會) 。而日本的戴明個人獎60年和「日經品質文獻賞」更日本的寶庫。

也許10年前，學會關秘書長說學會要推我去選「國家品質獎」，我都覺得或許晚了10年。哈哈。推掉的藉口是王晃三等等都沒取得，我那敢躐等？

我與林公談的真正重點是，中華民國的品質學會比中國的任一同業都早20年起步，如今比不上什麼北京的、上海、福建、廣州的學會 (網路上的實力對比，真是另一笑話！)。這充分反映台灣的空洞化以及組織人才的凋零。哀哉，吾輩心死矣。

談模式好壞和對錯 (David Kerridge)

2011-08-09T15:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Hanching,

Thanks for the information about Joyce Orsini's forthcoming book, and
the review of the book on Bayes Theorem.

I think that there is a lot more to be discovered about Bayes Theorem.
It is certainly a very important practical tool. For example, my email
is scanned for spam by a programme based on Bayes Theorem. But I rather
suspect it is not being used correctly - and still works.

In 1964 I was a Research Fellow, and two of us were investigating
methods of medical diagnosis. In other words, trying to develop
statistical rules for guessing what illness a patient is suffering from,
based on a limited number of tests or symptoms.

We found a paper, written by a computer scientist, that claimed to use
Bayes Theorem in medical diagnosis. But his method did not allow for the
obvious fact that different symptoms are not statistically independent.

We were shocked at such ignorance, and misuse of statistical theory. So
we set out to compare all the best methods we could find, including new
ones we developed ourselves, based on multivariate logistic analysis,
and another based on comparing each case with all the data in a
database.

Sad to say, the "wrong" method, based on bad theory, worked at least as
well as the other methods, though which worked best, for a particular
disease, depended on the sample size available. Ours was better for
large samples.

It seems that a simple, even a wrong model, can equal or sometimes beat
a better model with fewer parameters. I later found out that Norman
Bailey, at Oxford, had discovered the same thing in a different problem
(multiple regression), but found it so shocking that he did not publish
it.

The point I am making is that "correct theory" does not guarantee better
results in practice, and vice versa. Statistical theory hasn't caught up
with this fact yet, as far as I know.

I will try to explain the difference between the way Sir Harold Jeffreys
and W Edwards Deming *used* probability, which tells you more than what
they say. But it will take time, as I like to be thorough.

David

Deming (following Shewhart) 等人的概率哲學 (David Kerridge 教授)

2011-08-08T19:29:00.000-07:00

我兩月前希望英國的David Kerridge 教授能談一下概率的哲學
他昨天寫個簡要的說明

Dear Hanching

I am sorry to have been such a very long time in answering your
interesting question. There have been two reasons. I have been ill, and
found it hard to concentrate. But that would not have stopped me if the
question did not require a lot of concentration.

Both Dr Deming and Sir Harold Jeffreys held views of probability that
are different from those usually taught. They are, in fact extreme
cases. Sir Harold Jeffreys held views that are regarded by most people
as very out-of-date, being the same as those held by LaPlace a hundred
years before.

Deming (following Shewhart) based his views on the new philosophy of
science that came in with Relativity and Quantum Theory. This is so
advanced that few other statisticians are even aware of it yet. Shewhart
assuned that it would be universally adopted in time: but there is
little sign of it yet. (John W Tukey is the one exception that comes to
mind)

That's *why* there is a difference, and why both differ from the views
of probability in most textbooks. But to explain what the difference is,
is not easy, without explaining the different philosophical viewpoints.

That's what I have spent a lot of time trying to do. It makes it no
easier that Deming did not explain his view of probability explicitly. I
had to deduce it from remarks he made in research meetings, and in
papers like "On Probability as a Basis for Action."

Note that for Jeffreys, and those before him, probability is simply a
matter of logic: action may result from probability, but the nature of
probability is not defined in terms of action. For Shewhart and Deming,
everything scientific is defined in terms of action, rather than
thought, because actions can be observed, while thoughts can not.

This really requires a book to explain it - a pity Shewhart didn't write
one on this topic. But he probably felt that the problem of defining
probability was still not completely solved.

I spent years on this problem using the same advanced philosophical
viewpoint as Shewhart, long before I met Deming. I couldn't find any
other statistician in the UK who understood what I was saying. And I
heard Deming discussing his ideas with others, who couldn't see what he
meant. So he had the same problem.

This may be enough to be going on with. The rest may take a long time to
express in simple words. I intend to try, but it can't be hurried.

Best wishes

David

Bayes's theorem

2011-08-05T18:20:00.000-07:00

這純是歷史之一筆記
約10年前 David Kerridge 跟我說 Deming 博士留英時約1935 是復興/重印Bayes's theorem 者不過他後來可能還是古典的概率論者

'The Theory That Would Not Die'

By SHARON BERTSCH McGRAYNE
Reviewed by JOHN ALLEN PAULOS

Sharon Bertsch McGrayne traces the controversial history of Bayes's theorem and its contemporary practical applications.

The Mathematics of Changing Your Mind

By JOHN ALLEN PAULOS

Published: August 5, 2011

Sharon Bertsch McGrayne introduces Bayes’s theorem in her new book with a remark by John Maynard Keynes: “When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?”

Enlarge This Image

Illustration by Shannon May

THE THEORY THAT WOULD NOT DIE

How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines and Emerged Triumphant From Two Centuries of Controversy

By Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

320 pp. Yale University Press. $27.50.

Bayes’s theorem, named after the 18th-century Presbyterian minister Thomas Bayes, addresses this selfsame essential task: How should we modify our beliefs in the light of additional information? Do we cling to old assumptions long after they’ve become untenable, or abandon them too readily at the first whisper of doubt? Bayesian reasoning promises to bring our views gradually into line with reality and so has become an invaluable tool for scientists of all sorts and, indeed, for anyone who wants, putting it grandiloquently, to sync up with the universe. If you are not thinking like a Bayesian, perhaps you should be.

At its core, Bayes’s theorem depends upon an ingenious turnabout: If you want to assess the strength of your hypothesis given the evidence, you must also assess the strength of the evidence given your hypothesis. In the face of uncertainty, a Bayesian asks three questions: How confident am I in the truth of my initial belief? On the assumption that my original belief is true, how confident am I that the new evidence is accurate? And whether or not my original belief is true, how confident am I that the new evidence is accurate? One proto-Bayesian, David Hume, underlined the importance of considering evidentiary probability properly when he questioned the authority of religious hearsay: one shouldn’t trust the supposed evidence for a miracle, he argued, unless it would be even more miraculous if the report were untrue.

The theorem has a long and surprisingly convoluted history, and McGrayne chronicles it in detail. It was Bayes’s friend Richard Price, an amateur mathematician, who developed Bayes’s ideas and probably deserves the glory that would have resulted from a Bayes-Price theorem. After Price, however, Bayes’s theorem lapsed into obscurity until the illustrious French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace extended and applied it in clever, nontrivial ways in the early 19th century. Thereafter it went in and out of fashion, was applied in one field after another only to be later condemned for being vague, subjective or unscientific, and became a bone of contention between rival camps of mathematicians before enjoying a revival in recent years.

The theorem itself can be stated simply. Beginning with a provisional hypothesis about the world (there are, of course, no other kinds), we assign to it an initial probability called the prior probability or simply the prior. After actively collecting or happening upon some potentially relevant evidence, we use Bayes’s theorem to recalculate the probability of the hypothesis in light of the new evidence. This revised probability is called the posterior probability or simply the posterior. Specifically Bayes’s theorem states (trumpets sound here) that the posterior probability of a hypothesis is equal to the product of (a) the prior probability of the hypothesis and (b) the conditional probability of the evidence given the hypothesis, divided by (c) the probability of the new evidence.

Consider a concrete example. Assume that you’re presented with three coins, two of them fair and the other a counterfeit that always lands heads. If you randomly pick one of the three coins, the probability that it’s the counterfeit is 1 in 3. This is the prior probability of the hypothesis that the coin is counterfeit. Now after picking the coin, you flip it three times and observe that it lands heads each time. Seeing this new evidence that your chosen coin has landed heads three times in a row, you want to know the revised posterior probability that it is the counterfeit. The answer to this question, found using Bayes’s theorem (calculation mercifully omitted), is 4 in 5. You thus revise your probability estimate of the coin’s being counterfeit upward from 1 in 3 to 4 in 5.

A serious problem arises, however, when you apply Bayes’s theorem to real life: it’s often unclear what initial probability to assign to a hypothesis. Our intuitions are embedded in countless narratives and arguments, and so new evidence can be filtered and factored into the Bayes probability revision machine in many idiosyncratic and incommensurable ways. The question is how to assign prior probabilities and evaluate evidence in situations much more complicated than the tossing of coins, situations like global warming or autism. In the latter case, for example, some might have assigned a high prior probability to the hypothesis that the thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. But then came new evidence — studies showing that permanent removal of the compound from these vaccines did not lead to a decline in autism. The conditional probability of this evidence given the thimerosal hypothesis is tiny at best and thus a convincing reason to drastically lower the posterior probability of the hypothesis. Of course, people wedded to their priors can always try to rescue them from the evidence by introducing all sorts of dodges. Witness die-hard birthers and truthers, for example.

McGrayne devotes much of her book to Bayes’s theorem’s many remarkable contributions to history: she discusses how it was used to search for nuclear weapons, devise actuarial tables, demonstrate that a document seemingly incriminating Colonel Dreyfus was most likely a forgery, improve low-resolution computer images, judge the authorship of the disputed Federalist papers and determine the false positive rate of mammograms. She also tells the story of Alan Turing and others whose pivotal crypto-analytic work unscrambling German codes may have helped shorten World War II.

Statistics is an imperialist discipline that can be applied to almost any area of science or life, and this litany of applications is intended to be the unifying thread that sews the book into a coherent whole. It does so, but at the cost of giving it a list-like, formulaic feel. More successful are McGrayne’s vivifying sketches of the statisticians who devoted themselves to Bayesian polemics and counterpolemics. As McGrayne amply shows, orthodox Bayesians have long been opposed, sometimes vehemently, by so-called frequentists, who have objected to their tolerance for subjectivity. The nub of the differences between them is that for Bayesians the prior can be a subjective expression of the degree of belief in a hypothesis, even one about a unique event or one that has as yet never occurred. For frequentists the prior must have a more objective foundation; ideally that is the relative frequency of events in repeatable, well-defined experiments. McGrayne’s statisticians exhibit many differences, and she cites the quip that you can nevertheless always tell them apart by their posteriors, a good word on which to end.

John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University, is the author of several books, including “Innumeracy” and, most recently, “Irreligion.”

新經濟學與台灣戴明圈: The New Economics and A Taiwanese Deming Circle

高禩瑾先生

宣傳方式/Returns of the dragon

Returns of the dragon

復習W. Edwards Deming名言Out of the crisis /Fourteen Points and Seven Deadly Diseases of Management

Out of the crisis - lessons from British car manufacturing

感謝 Thanks

Daniel_Wang協 助做 Bill Scherkenbach 演講影片英文字幕

a student of W. Edwards Deming

paleontology - 古生物學Paleontology - Wikipedia,

In love as in equities, we are regularly fooled by randomness

感謝有您 邁向2012

《可靠性入門》Reliability by Arnold Kaufmann

Newt's big

Gingrich drew inspiration from management theorist

Deming led Japan back after WWII

By MIKE McINTIRE and JIM RUTENBERG

"缺腿的小熊算是熊嗎? ".可運作的定義 operational definition

Dr. Deming 的教育改革的故事

continuous improvement and continuous cost reduction

Op-Ed Columnist

Dr. Berwick’s Pink Slip

By JOE NOCERA

Published: December 5, 2011

Earl Wilson/The New York Times

hbr: Five Charts that Changed Business: hc 的評論

hbr: Five Charts that Changed Business: hc 的評論

Five Charts that Changed Business

Five Charts that Changed Business

Five Charts that Changed Business

Five Charts that Changed Business

Five Charts that Changed Business

Divided responsibility

Practical Guide to Quality 難得的實用文集

Practical Guide to Quality,這是一本難得的實用文集

conjoint analysis

A New Way to Gain Customer Insights

How conjoint analysis, a tried-and-true market research tool, can be used to support organic growth.

Looking for Luxury Shoppers

Protecting Profits at a Bank

Segmenting for Growth

Author Profile:

Donald J. Wheeler

[edit] References

Deming Medalists

"美國各城市謀殺率 "的10年間畫法

Easily ahead

the winners of the second annual Deming Cup

The W. Edwards Deming Center for Quality, Productivity and Competitiveness Awards Dr. Brent C. James, Chief Quality Officer at Intermountain Healthcare, and Sergio Marchionne, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Chrysler Group LLC and Chief Executive Officer, Fiat S.p.A. with the Deming Cup

美國人口統計局另種貧窮統計

Bleak Portrait of Poverty Is Off the Mark, Experts Say

By JASON DePARLE, ROBERT GEBELOFF and SABRINA TAVERNISE

Published: November 3, 2011

Multimedia

Related

Study Finds Big Spike in Poorest in the U.S. (November 4, 2011)

Travis Dove for The New York Times

Readers’ Comments

Published: November 3, 2011

A Different Portrait of Poverty

do 之前要"小規模試驗"一下 成功之後才"放行"

教育問題

Japan’s Standardized Baseballs Are Popular With Pitchers

Japan’s Standardized Baseballs Are Popular With Pitchers

By BRAD LEFTON

Published: October 22, 2011

Related

The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami (October 23, 2011)

重視學術研究

2011The Deming Application Prize: 恭賀欣興電子等等

1. The Japan Quality Medal

Rane TRW Steering Systems Limited, Steering Gear Division, (India) Mr. Harish Lakshman, Managing Director

2. The Deming Prize for Individuals

Ricoh Company, Ltd. (Japan)Mr. Masamitsu Sakurai, Chairman

3. The Deming Application Prize

Sanden Vikas (India) Limited, (India) Mr. Naveen Agarwal, Executive Director & COO

The CPAC Roof Tile Company Limited, (Thailand) Mr. Noppadol Gaewthabthim, Managing Director

Unimicron Technology Corporation, (Taiwan) Mr. T. J. Tseng, Chairman & CEO

4. The Nikkei QC Literature Prize (available in Japanese only)

1.日本品質管理賞

Daniel_Wang協助做 Bill Scherkenbach 演講影片英文字幕

感謝有您邁向2012

do 之前要"小規模試驗"一下成功之後才"放行"

Rane TRW Steering Systems Limited, Steering Gear Division, (India)
Mr. Harish Lakshman, Managing Director

Ricoh Company, Ltd. (Japan)
Mr. Masamitsu Sakurai, Chairman

Sanden Vikas (India) Limited, (India)
Mr. Naveen Agarwal, Executive Director & COO

The CPAC Roof Tile Company Limited, (Thailand)
Mr. Noppadol Gaewthabthim, Managing Director

Unimicron Technology Corporation, (Taiwan)
Mr. T. J. Tseng, Chairman & CEO

Rane TRW Steering Systems Limited, Steering Gear Division (インド)
　Mr. Harish Lakshman, Managing Director

桜井　正光　氏
株式会社リコー　取締役会長執行役員

Sanden Vikas （India） Limited(インド)
　Mr. Naveen Agarwal, Executive Director & COO

The CPAC Roof Tile Company Limited(タイ)
　Mr. Noppadol Gaewthabthim, Managing Director

Unimicron Technology Corporation (台湾)
　Mr. T. J. Tseng, Chairman & CEO

「RとRコマンダーではじめる実験計画法」
「フリーソフトウェアＲによる統計的品質管理入門第２版」
「RとRコマンダーではじめる多変量解析」

荒木　孝治編著
　発行所：株式会社日科技連出版社

2011年華人Deming 學院年會

2011年華人Deming 學院年會會前的感想

敬悼趙耀東先生

By SHARON BERTSCH McGRAYNE
Reviewed by JOHN ALLEN PAULOS