The topic of variation will certainly be discussed in any statistics or research related subjects, however the understanding of this very important topic is still very vague in many areas. A lot of approaches, methods, techniques, experiments, measurements and so on go wrong, merely because of poor understanding in the concept of variation. The biggest challenge that we have in our life on a day to day basis is addressing variation in whatever form that it appears. Again the ability to identify, measure, control, reduce or eliminate such variations is known as Statistical Thinking.
From the time we wake up till we go to bed again, our day will be filled all kind of variations, well at this point it would be up to us to measure what we want as long it’s relevant to the issue at hand. One example that would give us an idea on this would the way we plan our departure to work from home. Of course the first thing is that we must understand the type of variations exist on the road in all seven days of the week, this would give us idea on when to move out of the house, which route take or avoid and so on. What are we trying to do here? Yes, we are trying to create a controlled condition so that our objectives or intention can be achieved.
Talking about controlled condition, one should realize to create a good output or best outcomes in whatever that we do, we should look into a sustainable controlled condition, where all variations are under control, reduced or eliminated. Again when we say sustainable, it should be realized that we can only create sustainability when we totally understand the dynamism of the system within. This is because Quality is dynamic phenomena. If we fail to understand these matters whatever that we strive to do would fail easily and repeated failures happen as well.
Let’s also talk about, a recent event that shocked the nation (Malaysia), where 3 young girls died after falling into the river when the bridge they were crossing gave way. Well, one thing for sure various parties will step in, to find out what happened and of course we will get to the bottom of the matter. Again, what allowed this failure event in the first place? Yes, variation was not understood by the builder (which certainly includes all the relevant parties involved), the building processes before, during and after was certainly not in a controlled condition. The outcome, death of three primary school girls who would have been here if not for the sub-standard bridge. That is the highest price we can pay when we ignore Quality. At this point we also hope that all other bridges being build and all the existing bridges will be kept under sustainable controlled condition, learning from this mistake that happened. Prevention in a pro-active manner will always take us further in many ways.
“Knock on the Right door it’ll Open” and “Ask, you’ll be given”, well sounds like a familiar phrase right, but now which door? And What to ask? Yes , we can certainly link this matter to the issue above. If we are bringing up an issue to policy makers of the country, how do we go about? Yes, the people’s representatives meet up to discuss, give views, take opinions, gather information from various government or non government entities and the compile reports & so on. Again, in many aspects fail to understand the concept of variation and fail to create a controlled condition. When we even talk about statistics at this point, it’s always using percentages. Using percentages to highlight a matter is fine but it could also mislead the issue or even hide the variations that should be known. We must start talking about real numbers involved so that it’ll be more clear in understanding questions like how many do we need, how many to request thus knowing which door to knock on. When we don’t realize this, we will be given the wrong things at the right time or the right things at the wrong time. Another possible outcome is also that we get when we have enough and the ones who badly needs help don’t get at all. Ultimately, when we don’t realize a sustainable controlled condition, we are not far away from knocking the doors of failures.
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