Tuesday, June 07, 2005
I have been a very lazy blogger now for like two months. Sorry.
Also, Warmest belated Birthday wishes to Barb. Happy 127th birthday!
But now I've got something to bitch about again so I feel the urge to blog it out.
As some of you may know, I am currently enrolled in a project management certificate program at Mt. Royal college. I go 6 weeks of Friday, Saturday classes. So, in 12 days I will learn enough about project management to be considered a professional, but I digress.... The most recent class was one entitled "Quality" which I found to be particularly noteworthy. Much of the Friday was spent looking at statistical quality process control. Being a graduate of a statistics program, and a member of the American Statistical Association I was perturbed and downright pissed about the way statistics is used.
Basically, you take a very complicated process, like regression to the mean, and dumb it down to the point where a 5 year old could make it happen. They bastardized the statistical procedures that can tell us so much. There is no wonder left in me, I finally understand why Statisticians hate Management-types. Then, not only do they dumb it down, and use the coarsest view of these delicate ideas, but the Management-types give it the highest possible value when they give this info to their managers. I held my tongue through the class, even when he said that the numbers you got could tell you how you would perform in the future. I.E. Fortune telling as an exact science. I could have spit fire at any time that day. I guffawed several times and got some funny looks.
It was then that I realized, I was taking project management for dummies, with people who couldn't tell me the capital city of Nunavat. Numbskulls, the lot of them. I obviously should have chosen the $6000 York Program, but silly me, I thought I could get the same effect from a $2400 course that was twice as many classroom hours.
Also, Warmest belated Birthday wishes to Barb. Happy 127th birthday!
But now I've got something to bitch about again so I feel the urge to blog it out.
As some of you may know, I am currently enrolled in a project management certificate program at Mt. Royal college. I go 6 weeks of Friday, Saturday classes. So, in 12 days I will learn enough about project management to be considered a professional, but I digress.... The most recent class was one entitled "Quality" which I found to be particularly noteworthy. Much of the Friday was spent looking at statistical quality process control. Being a graduate of a statistics program, and a member of the American Statistical Association I was perturbed and downright pissed about the way statistics is used.
Basically, you take a very complicated process, like regression to the mean, and dumb it down to the point where a 5 year old could make it happen. They bastardized the statistical procedures that can tell us so much. There is no wonder left in me, I finally understand why Statisticians hate Management-types. Then, not only do they dumb it down, and use the coarsest view of these delicate ideas, but the Management-types give it the highest possible value when they give this info to their managers. I held my tongue through the class, even when he said that the numbers you got could tell you how you would perform in the future. I.E. Fortune telling as an exact science. I could have spit fire at any time that day. I guffawed several times and got some funny looks.
It was then that I realized, I was taking project management for dummies, with people who couldn't tell me the capital city of Nunavat. Numbskulls, the lot of them. I obviously should have chosen the $6000 York Program, but silly me, I thought I could get the same effect from a $2400 course that was twice as many classroom hours.
