Improvement Insights Blog

Signal versus Noise

“Our evolutionary instincts sometimes lead us to see patterns when there are none there. People have been doing this all the time – finding patterns in random noise.” – Tomaso Poggio

People just need a way to separate the Signal from the Noise.

Here are some insights from the book by Nate Silver.

Continue Reading "Signal versus Noise"

Posted by Jay Arthur in Data Mining, Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog, Six Sigma.

It’s Hard to Do Data Analysis on Ugly Data… Part 2

People often get stuck before the “Analyze” phase of DMAIC because of ugly data.

You can’t analyze data until it is in the right format for analysis.

In this data about medications that might affect patient falls, we have to:

1. Transpose the data
2. Use Excel’s Text-to-column feature to split the meds into separate cells
3. Use QI Macros UnStack Columns tool to get all of the meds into a single column
4. Use QI Macros Data Mining Wizard to create a PivotTable and Pareto chart of medications involved in patient falls

You can watch the video below:

Continue Reading "It’s Hard to Do Data Analysis on Ugly Data… Part 2"

Posted by Jay Arthur in Data Mining, Improvement Insights.