Dr. Deming wrote this paper to fill in some of the missing links in the use of statistical methods, with special reference to responsibilities at the management level for effective mobilization of statistical knowledge and skills. He describes statistical control of quality as a system, not a bag of techniques, focuses on statistical methods in improvement of operations, and describes 24 uses of statistical methods in various stages of production.

This 22 page paper was delivered by Dr. Deming at the All India Conference on Quality Control, New Delhi, 17 March 1971. It is reprinted from the Proceedings, pages 98-119.

Most frames for censuses, complete testing, or sampling, are already stratified into natural geographic zones. Material, as it comes to us in the frame, is never thoroughly mixed. This natural stratification is automatic and costs nothing. It sometimes pays to rearrange the sampling units into more homogenous groups called strata. We sometimes rearrange all the sampling units in the frame before we draw the sample, and sometimes we rearrange only the sampling units in the sample, depending on costs. In this technical paper, Dr. Deming describes nine possible procedures of stratified sampling, indicates when each is most appropriate and compares the gains in precision with the costs for each plan.

This 23 page article appeared in Estadistica, Journal of the Inter-American Statistical Institute, December 1959, pp 716-738.

Dr. Deming wrote this article to present some theory by which to measure the influence of the inspector, and to show how sensitive the results of inspection are to this influence. The theory indicates what records to keep in order to improve performance of inspectors and the supervision of inspection, whether inspection be carried out by visual inspection, or by use of instruments, or by automatic recording devices. Dr. Deming and Dr. Morris H. Hansen then give an example of use of this theory to estimate the overall physical condition of gas pipe buried in the ground.

This twelve-page article appeared in Statistica Neerlandica, Vol. 26/3, 1972 (in English).

The purpose of this paper is to present, from Dr. Deming’s point of view, why SQC has been so effective in Japan. He concentrates on the distinction between special causes and common causes, which appeared to be especially important. He shows that statistical techniques enable us not only to detect the existence of conditions that need correction; they also determine which administrative level is responsible to identify and correct the cause of trouble. Dr. Deming defines SQC and discusses some responsibilities of management, the dynamic nature of statistical control, and the power and limitations of statistical theory.

This four-page article appeared in ICQC’ 69-TOKYO.

This article is in the form of a letter to a manager who has requested help from Dr. Deming on some problems with production, high costs and variable quality. Dr. Deming states that failure of management to accept and act on their responsibilities in quality control is one cause of trouble. He continues with 34 observations of how this plays out in the organization.

This three-page article appeared in Quality Progress, Vol 5, no 7 in July 1972. It was written in response to a Viewpoints column on process capability.

Dr. Deming wrote this article to explain some of the problems in the design and interpretation of a study whose aim is to evaluate the effectiveness of some treatment or plan; also to point out some of the difficulties of studying by retrospect the cause of success or failure, or the cause of a disease or of a specific alleged cure therefor. Emphasis is on ways to improve the reliability of evaluation by understanding and avoiding possible misuses of statistical techniques in evaluation. Sections focus on the issue of evaluation, need for care in definitions of terms, four requirements for an effective system of evaluation, limitations of statistical inference, enumerative studies contrasted with analytic studies, possible mistakes in an enumerative study, possible mistakes in an analytic study, use of judgment samples, statistical tests of hypotheses, and the retrospective method.

This sixteen-page article appeared as chapter 4 of the book, Handbook of Evaluation Research, Vol. 1, edited by Elmer L. Struening and Marcia Guttentag (Sage Publications, 1975).