Innovators' Summit

Did you see the cover article in yesterday's New York Times Sunday Book Review? Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker reviewed the new book by Malcolm Gladwell, who was the keynote speaker for the Innovators' Summit in Chicago.

Pinker writes that Gladwell is "a minor genius who unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of statistical reasoning and who occasionally blunders into spectacular failures."

Also worth a read is the editors' note for the book review section, which points out that Gladwell says getting a graduate degree in statistics may be the best way to start a career in journalism now.

The editors' note also quotes Pinker as saying statistical reasoning is the most important scientific concept that non-scientists lack.

I met José Ramírez, PhD, in Chicago at the JMP Discovery conference and Innovators’ Summit. An industrial statistician and longtime JMP and SAS user, he was quite the celebrity at the conference, where he gave a well-attended talk about designing experiments using JMP and SAS.

José told me about his new book, co-authored with his wife Brenda Ramírez, who is also an industrial statistician and expert user of JMP and SAS. The pair wrote the book, Analyzing and Interpreting Continuous Data Using JMP: A Step-by-Step Guide, over two years, on weekends and evenings. They also write a blog called Stat Insights that includes excerpts from their book and discusses “statistics as a catalyst for engineering and scientific discoveries.”

Here, José and Brenda share details about the book for readers of the JMP Blog.

Arati: Why did you decide to write this book?

José & Brenda: A few years ago, the JMP team approached us with the idea to write a book for engineers and scientists. This seemed like a natural progression in our careers, since we have been collaborating with engineers and scientists for many years and we have developed and delivered countless hours of training in statistics and continuous improvement. In addition, we are big fans of JMP software and have been using it for a long time.

So writing this book seemed like the perfect opportunity for us to consolidate the significant knowledge we have gained as practicing industrial statisticians, and share it in a way that is far-reaching and useful to this community. An additional inspiration for our book comes from the National Bureau of Standards Handbook 91 Experimental Statistics by Mary Natrella. We wanted to bring the same spirit and utility of the NBS Handbook 91 to the countless engineers, scientists and data analysts whose work requires them to transform data into actionable information.

Arati: Who, specifically, will benefit from reading and using your book? And how do you hope they will use the book?

Brenda: The book is primarily written for engineers and scientists who need to use statistics and JMP to make sense of data and make sound decisions based on their analyses. This includes, for example, people working in semiconductor, automotive, chemical and aerospace industries. Other professionals in these industries who will find it valuable include quality engineers, reliability engineers, Six Sigma Black Belts and statisticians.

In addition to the working professional, those who are studying to become engineers, scientists or even statisticians, as well as those teaching them, should get a copy of our book. It is a great teaching aid.

For those who want a reference for how to solve common problems using statistics and JMP, we walk through different case studies using a seven-step problem-solving framework, with heavy emphasis on the problem setup, interpretation, and translation of the results in the context of the problem.

For those who want to learn more about the statistical techniques and concepts, we provide a practical overview of the underpinnings and provide appropriate references. Finally, for those who want to learn how to benefit from the power of JMP, we have loaded the book with many step-by-step instructions and tips and tricks.

Arati: What kinds of case studies or problems do you discuss in the book?

José: In Chapters 3 through 7, we start with a problem description, setting the stage for the uncertainties that need to be solved using the statistical techniques described in the chapter.

All of the case studies in the book are based upon common problems that engineers or scientist will come across at some point in their careers, and the chapter headings reflect the specific application.

For example, in Chapter 4, “Comparing the Measured Performance of a Material, Process, or Product to a Standard,” we use a semiconductor example involving a new three-zone vertical furnace for thin film deposition of waters to illustrate the usefulness of one-sample significance tests to qualify a new piece of equipment.

In Chapter 5, “Comparing the Measured Performance of Two Materials, Processes, or Products,” we compare the performance of two mass spectrometers in an analytical laboratory using the atomic weight of silver to determine if a bias exists and to understand their measurement error.

Although it is not officially a case study, we are thrilled to include in Chapter 7 the data from Albert Einstein’s first published paper. In his 1901 paper, a young Einstein used least squares to fit a model to investigate the nature of intermolecular forces.

Arati: It’s pretty cool that you had Professor Douglas Montgomery write the foreword to your book. How did you make that happen?

José: Ever since we were students, we have been using and following the work of Professor Montgomery, and we believe his books are excellent references for engineers and scientists. We also share a passion for industrial statistics and Doug and I have crossed paths many times over the years at various statistical conferences and events, including, more recently, at JMP conferences.

When we put all of these pieces together – statistics, engineering and JMP – Professor Montgomery seemed like the perfect person to entrust with this important part of our book. So we just had to find a way to ask him if he would be willing to write the foreword to our book. Luckily for us, that opportunity arose at the Quality & Productivity Research conference in June 2008 in Madison, WI. At that event, I was able to discuss this possibility with him, and without hesitation he said, “Yes.”

Arati: How will you use this book going forward in your professional career?

Brenda: This book is a reflection of how we collaborate with engineers and scientists to use statistics as a catalyst for new discoveries and insights. Having the book will make it easier to share our statistical engineering philosophy with others.

Arati: Where is your book sold?

José: Our book is available online from the SAS Web site or Amazon.com. Both Web sites allow the reader to view the table of contents and a sample chapter from the book.

While at Discovery 2009 and Innovators' Summit in Chicago last week, John Sall, chief architect of JMP, spread the word about JMP, SAS and the value of analytics. He met with journalists and bloggers, and some of the coverage has already been published online. Take a look:

• In a story for Computerworld, reporter Eric Lai asked Sall why JMP chose best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell to headline the Chicago conferences. "Journalists are like detectives. A lot of our customers are like that," said Sall, who is co-founder and Executive Vice President of SAS. "They don't just want to prove things you already know. That's lawyer stuff. They want to look at statistical outliers and figure out new things."
  
  
• Greg Burns, Senior Business Correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, talked with both Sall and Gladwell during the conferences. He wrote up his interview with Sall in two parts, posting it Tuesday and Wednesday this week. It is part of what Burns is calling Big Brain Week, with Sall representing left-brain thinking and Gladwell representing right-brain thinking. Burns' interview with Gladwell appears in two parts today and tomorrow.
  
  
• Data visualization guru Stephen Few, Principal of Perceptual Edge, wrote about the conferences and Gladwell's keynote speech in his influential blog, Visual Business Intelligence. Few applauded Gladwell's insight that modern problems present the challenges of too much information and too little understanding of that data, pointing to a need for good analytics. "More directly related to my work in BI, I’ve stated countless times that this industry has done a wonderful job of giving us technologies for collecting and storing enormous quantities of data, but has largely failed to provide the data sense-making tools that are needed to put data to use for decision-making," Few writes.
  

From what I understand, there's more coverage to come. Please let me know if you've written or know of a blog post or other online content about the conferences.

And if you didn't get to go to Chicago last week for Discovery and the Innovators' Summit, you can get a sense of why some attendees said it was the best conference they'd ever been to by checking out our own coverage; it includes photos, live blogs, audio, video and Twitter updates.

We hope you'll be at our analytics conferences in Chicago later this week, but if you can't make it, you can follow the action via the JMP Web site.

On Thursday, Sept. 17, at 8:30 a.m. Central Time, our live conference page will start to fill up with Twitter updates, live blogging, photos, video and audio podcasts from Discovery 2009 and Innovators' Summit. (At the moment, you'll see little going on at the live conference page -- but you can take a peek at what we have planned!)

You can use Twitter to send us a question for a particular speaker during the conferences. Just add the hashtag #JMPcon to your tweet, and we'll do our best to ask your question for you.

You can also send questions and comments via our live blog, which will be hosted here at the JMP Blog. We'll be live blogging all of the keynote presentations, including the speech by Malcolm Gladwell on Friday afternoon.

You know Malcolm Gladwell's books: Outliers, Blink and The Tipping Point. All three hit No. 1 on The New York Times best-sellers list.

Now you can hear Malcolm Gladwell live and in person. JMP has lined him up as the keynote speaker for the Discovery and Innovators' Summit conferences in Chicago in September. Attendees for both conferences will meet the afternoon of Sept. 18 for Gladwell's talk about his latest book, Outliers, a question-and-answer session and a book signing.

So the chance to meet this innovative thinker is even more reason to sign up for Discovery (formerly the JMP User Conference) and Innovators' Summit.

And Gladwell isn't the only big-name author JMP has scheduled for Chicago. Stephen Baker will be the keynote speaker for the second day of the Innovators' Summit. Baker is the author of The Numerati and a senior writer for BusinessWeek magazine.

To learn more about the Discovery conference and Innovators' Summit and find out which one suits you -- and why you might want to attend both -- visit our brand-new Chicago 2009 conference Web site.