Minitab Method Chooser

If you are even remotely related to either of the following professions: Quality, Six-Sigma, Reliability, or Quantitative Analysis used in agricultural/clinical/medical research; I' am sure you have used or heard of Minitab at one point. Minitab is the most widely used software package for data-analysis and statistics. I use it for all sort of data crunching I need to do as part of Six-Sigma projects and I really like it. The package in itself has evolved a lot and become lot more user friendly rather than statistician friendly as it used to be long ago.

One thing I like in particular is the Resources section on their website, which has lots of tutorials, tips, and tricks on using the software. Recently they have released a"Method Chooser". If you are wondering what it is exactly, then let me quote it from their website:

"Method Chooser directs you to the Minitab analysis that’s most appropriate for your data and your objectives. This tool provides an interactive decision tree for each key area and includes concise explanations and concrete examples for support. Use it to quickly grasp the basic requirements and perform the right analysis, every time."

In essence, it is a detailed statistical data-analysis roadmap to lead you to the right analysis for your data-type and your intended purpose of analysis. I have used such roadmaps in past and they tend to be very useful. This time, Minitab has really done a terrific job by putting the most comprehensive roadmap, I have ever seen. You can download the whole package from this link. It consists of five sections as following:

1. Basic Statistical Tests
2. Regression and ANOVA
3. Measurement Systems Analysis
4. Control Charts
5. Capability Analysis

Here is a screen-shot of an example from the road map. The examples described in the main window are corresponding to the analysis shown in the left menu bar. Isn't it great that you don't have to flip through pages or scroll around to match the text with the road map?


"On a side note, I find the name "Method Chooser" to be very funny. I am sure some statistician coined this term, and not a marketing or sales guy."

Statistics in Olympics

Summer Olympics 2008 are over now and by now I am trying to catch up with my sleep. With such a great variety of sports and superb performances from players all over the world, it was really difficult to resist watching them, even with their late night broadcasts. The scoring pattern of various sports and the performances of the athletes have always made me curious, in terms of statistics. We know that the best performaces of athletes which usally creates world records are the outliers of their performance distribution, which tends to be normal. However, I never thought anything beyod that, till I read this post on Freakonomics Blog. It refers to a graphic from The New York Times and discusses how extreme outlier was the Usian Bolt's performance in 200 m sprint.

There is this another post on iSixSigma blog basting the tie-breaking rule in Gymnastics. I was not able to completely understand this rule too, while watching the live performance and felt that it was an appropriate way of measuring a gymnast's performance. By removing the lowest score in case of a tie, Nastia actually lost a higher score than He Kexin and lost the gold medal........

"An arbitrary and statistically flawed tie-breaking rule cost Nastia Liukin of the United States the gold medal in the women’s uneven bars competition at the Olympics earlier this month, according to Dr. Prasad Raje, CEO of Instantis.

After looking at the tied scores of gymnasts Liukin and He Kexin of China, Raje figures that Liukin actually had a “statistically superior score because there was less variance in the judge’s opinions on who performed better.”"

Statz Rappers

Check this very cool rap video with statistics in the lyrics. It might be a good one to show during the break times of your Six Sigma training class. These people are really very creative with their statistics.....that's for sure....

The description per Google Video:

"The number 1 hit jam of Summer '06 is here: Da Statz Krew's "Statz 4 Life"! This video debuted in a Research Methods in Psychology course taught by then University of Oregon (ABD) graduate student Chuck Tate on May 18, 2006. This video is Chuck's attempt to get students to enjoy statistics as much as they enjoy hip-hop. ......Special thanks to Nelly's song "Grillz," of which this song and video are a parody."