OT! OT!
Well, I hold the copyright, but you seem like you could use it in the future, so I'll allow you non-exclusive use, okay? <grin>
How I came to use the term "One-point Trending:"
When I worked at Dow Chemical, I had a committee job doing safety and operations reviews of the various chemical production units. Every two years, minimum, for each unit! A big job. And I was carrying the tag of "statistician" as well as chemist, so I got to be the mathematical conscience of the committee.
At one review, a young engineer got up to explain his findings about how to improve the productivity of his operations. He showed a chart with a straight line through the current operation point, and he noted that he could get further out that line by simply cranking up his unit.
I asked him how many points he'd taken to verify the line. "One," he said. I seemed to remember that one point didn't define a line, so I asked where the predictor line came from. "Well, I operate here now," pointing at his lonely data point, "and I get the origin for free!"
I called a halt to the review before he could implement his concept, and maybe blow us all to Kingdom Come.
And that's when I began to use the term....
Mitch
"Old statisticians never die, they just get broken down by age and sex." |
