Basic Statistics

Objectives and intended outcomes: Upon successful completion of the course participants will be able to:

Differentiate between descriptive and inferential statistics
Distinguish between the 4 scales of measurement; Nominal, Ordinal, Interval and Ratio
Create frequency distributions
Visually present data in meaningful ways
Understand the methods of measuring central tendency
Understand the methods of measuring Variability
Describe and use Box Plots
Describe and use Dot Plots
Describe and use Histograms
Describe and use Normal distributions

Intended Audience: This course is intended for all product designers and New Product Introduction coordinators who lead design teams, as well as manufacturing engineers, quality engineers and continuous improvement engineers.

Prerequisites: This workshop focuses on the skills development of data analysis, and assumes those attending possess experience and understanding of systems or processes producing some sort of data, and have the need to summarize or graphically depict that data, or will be participating in continuous improvement teamwork.

Instructor: The class is taught by a Quality expert with over 20 years of experience. The instructor is engaging and passionate about all aspects of quality and has traveled the world teaching and showing practitioners how to find value by increasing product or service quality to the customer. The instructor believes Basic Statistics is required learning for everyone from infant to those on their deathbed. No exceptions! These basic principles of data analysis are fun to teach, and have such a critical impact in making good decisions. The instructor will open the mind of the student to the possibilities of statistical use, and challenge the students to think about the future of statistics in their lives. This is a must have course that is used as a foundation for other courses critical to understanding process performance, capability, control and the systems used to measure the process. If taken as part of one of our 10 day training packages it entitles you to 1/2 hour of free consulting*. Taking this course is an important step in qualifying the practitioner to be certified** in SPC and MSA.

DESCRIPTION:

Basic Statistics: This class is a one day practitioner’s course. In this course you will learn the basics in the practice and science of analyzing numerical data in large quantities. We will practice these basics in a fun, engaging and practical manner by generating data through an experiment, graphing, analyzing, describing and learning about the experiment through the data. In this class we will learn about different types of data and different methods of measuring the data points relative to the group of data. We will learn how to graphically present and explain what the data tells us about the experiment. By the end of this course you will be able to take what you have learned in this course and use it to understand more about the type of data your process generates and how you can statistically describe and learn from it.

What is a Basic Statistics? Basic statistics is the practice and science of analyzing numerical data in large quantities. Although a person can pursue a PHD in statistics or have a career as a statistician and statistical expert, the great majority of us just need some basics. We need to understand what kind of data we have, what forms of analysis we can perform on it, is it normal and what does that imply, how can it be used to determine control, how much error is due to the way we measured it, and what is the difference between correlation and causation? This class gives you the basic foundation on which you can build your knowledge of Statistical Process Control, Measurement Systems Analysis and Process Capability.

When and where do we use Basic Statistics? Basic Statistics are used all around us in our everyday life. We hear it on the radio and see it in the news. It describes our sports teams, the individual players, and helps us compare and contrast why our favorite team will likely win against one opponent and likely lose against another. Statistics describe our economy, the stock market, the price we pay for milk and fuel, and can tell you a lot about the processes that give you data every day. We can use statistics to describe data that will tell us where improvement will be successful in a desired outcome and where it will not. It can tell us what to improve and when. It can even suggest how things could be improved. We just need to learn the language of data so it can speak to us clearly. The better we speak this language the more places we find where we can use statistics, and the more places we find where to use it the more useful it becomes.