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• Default Rates on Loans by Credit Score

  About 38% of people have credit scores from 750-850 (<1% default rate). Another 37% from 600-749 (5+% default rate) and about 25% from 350-599 (25+% default rate).

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• Beehive Fence Protects Farms from Elephants

  This is another cool use of appropriate technology. One of the problems with Elephants in Africa is when they go into farm fields and eat crops and destroy crops. The elephants and bees project is helping farmers deal with that problem.

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• Deming’s Stage 0: By What Method?

  Ron talks about W. Edwards Deming teaching a 2 week course on consumer research in Japan in 1951: that course included a section titled “the art of questioning and interviewing.” Dr. Deming had participants go out into the street of Tokyo and interview potential customers. Those interested in Lean Startup will recognize this activity.

  Ron Moen’s presentation explores what “stage 0” should look like (Deming provided little guidance). Ron decided it was important to start with the customer need. When gathering data, to learn if the idea has merit, the data collection should be made at the actual place of work by the people doing the work (gemba).

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• Making Your Case to Senior Executives

  My advice is to grow your circle of influence and build the capability of the organization to adopt a customer focused continual improvement management system. Once that is done, speaking to the c-suite is easy. Before that is done, speaking to them is still easy, unless you want them to change their short term financial focus.

  As with all people, CEOs are influenced by good stories. So if your goal is to “make a sale” (for whatever you are selling) putting in stories that speak to their way of seeing things is always wise. By looking at the rhetoric they use and actions they have taken you should be able to see what they have a soft spot for in stories and use that to craft the stories you will tell to make your case.

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• If Japan Can... Why Cant We? – 1980 NBC Special Report

  When this was broadcast 35 years ago there was an immediate demand by business to learn and apply Deming’s ideas. It is hard to understand how great an impact it had, from our current position.

  ...

  Throughout “If Japan Can, Why Cant We?” executives and front line workers talk about how important it is to involve workers in improvement efforts.

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• How to Frame Photos of People Well

  One thing I find amusing is that selfies actually take advantage of something good photographers knew a long time ago. To get good photos of people put them in the foreground. You still see it today, but it was much more common (like 98% of these type of photos), where the people are tiny dots next to some tourist attraction. Selfies go a bit overboard with putting the person in the foreground (most of the time) but they are often better than the tiny dot people photos.

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• Root Cause - Addressing Systemic Causes Not Symptoms

  It isn't that there is this "true root cause" that created the current problem. There is a way to look at the issue and find a deeper cause that will allow you to address it and improve the future performance of the system.
  
  Depending on how you look at the problem there can be many different "root causes" that are sensible from their different perspectives. The important thing is by aiming to fix root/systemic problems you will not just treat the current symptom you are dealing with today but eliminate future problems from occurring.

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• Investing in Peer to Peer Loans

  As long as you have a well diversified portfolio of personal loans there is a long track record of the risk. And while plenty of risky personal loans will default, and more will default if the economy has a downturn the interest rates on the loans provides good income even after such losses. And even if things go poorly the actually losses of capital should be small (over the whole portfolio)...

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• 200,000 People Die Every Year in Europe from Adverse Drug Effects – How Can We Improve?

  I think interactions is a hugely important area that needs a great deal more research. Doing so is very complex, which means it isn’t surprising so much more work is needed. The work of my father (and George Box and others) on multi-factorial experimentation is a powerful tool to aid this work (and that connection is likely one of the reasons I find the area of interactions so interesting – along with the realization there is so much benefit possible if we focus in that area more). Previous post on this Curious Cat Science and Engineering blog: Introduction to Fractional Factorial Designed Experiments.

  The human and financial costs of adverse effects are very high. That is why the discovery of new medicines is increasingly focused more on predicting possible adverse effects at the initial stages of developing a new drug.

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• National Museum of Korea in Seoul

  The National Museum of Korea is a wonderful tourist destination in Seoul. I recommend it very highly.

  The museum displays relics and artifacts in six permanent exhibition galleries: Prehistory and Ancient History, Medieval and Early Modern History, Calligraphy and Painting, Asian Art, Sculpture and Crafts as well as one gallery highlighting donations.

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• A Powerful Tool: The Capacity Matrix

  One of the things that I learned about at that seminar was using a capacity matrix to improve student learning. It is one of those ideas that when you hear about it, immediately you realize this is a vastly superior method to those current used. I am cynical/experienced enough to know that just because much better methods are available, and explained to people, is no guaranty they will be used.

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• A Powerful Tool: The Capacity Matrix

  The basic idea of the capacity matrix is to track your capability for each concept:

  1. awareness (information) – I am aware of this idea and can recall pertinent details as needed.
  2. knowledge (understanding and comprehension) – I can explain this idea or theory. I can translate the idea into my own words. I can make an example to explain the idea and demonstrate learning.
  3. know-how (analysis and application)...
  4. mastery (judgement and evaluation)...

  ...

  It seems to me that obviously such a manner of matching potential employees to the needs of the organization is a huge improvement upon current methods...

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• Backyard Wildlife: Blue Jay

  This is a picture I simply could not have taken before I bought my new camera (a Canon PowerShot SX60 HS Digital Camera with 65 times optical zoom). Birds are still hard to photograph but now at least occasionally I get a decent photo of birds.

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• Teaching Students How to Use Better Management Practices

  I wrote a blog post about critical thinking perhaps being the most important catalyst to successful adoption of continually improvement management practices.

  A system that promotes critical thinking and puts continual improvement first is one that is well on the way to better management practices...

  Teaching the quality tools in combination with critical thinking is a powerful approach. Students that learn to use quality tools to experiment to achieve quality results from system will be well suited to the modern workplace.

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• Location Independent Living Can Be In Your Comfort Zone and a Good Experience

  I think way more it is about this type of thing being in your comfort zone. When I hear people talking about how they stepped out of their comfort zone it seems to me they just aren’t comfortable plodding through an office for 40 years. Doing that is outside their comfort zone. The reason they did something else was because it was in their comfort zone.

  I think there are benefits to shaking things up and trying things you are not comfortable with. I think way more often when people talk about that being successful for them what they really did was shake off the shackles of an uncomfortable situation and found one that is more in their comfort zone.

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