Archive for October, 2009
Statistics in action
It’s coming, Campers…the 2010 US Census. And the brouhaha is broiling around the place of statistical sampling in the official numbers. Apparently Dems favor sampling the population and drawing conclusions based on samples, and Repubs are opposed to sampling. As we all know, congressional representation boundaries, education funding and a zillion other critical decisions are [...]
Decimate the competition
Where measurement and etymology meet. Getting some refresher info on mutually exclusive random sampling, I came across a definition of “decimate”. Decimation (Latin: decimatio; decem = “ten”) was a form of military discipline used by officers in the Roman Army to punish mutinous or cowardly soldiers. The word decimation is derived from Latin meaning “removal [...]
Measuring the Assumptions
If we assume (and we do), that training has a positive impact on an organization’s goals, then the goal of a training measurement plan is to measure our assumptions about that impact wherever possible. We know that: Training enables knowledge and skill Knowledge and skill enable job performance Job performance enables business process success Business [...]