Dr. Wheeler
Donald J. Wheeler

Author

SPC Press

Dr. Wheeler is a fellow of both the American Statistical Association and the American Society for Quality who has taught more than 1,000 seminars in 17 countries on six continents. He welcomes your questions; you can contact him at djwheeler@spcpress.com.

Mon, 12/08/2025 - 12:03
Transforming the Data Can Be Fatal to Your Analysis If you think you really know your data, look again.
Thu, 09/03/2009 - 05:00
Following my article on Leptokurtophobics (Do You Have Leptokurtophobia?) it was almost inevitable that we should hear from one. We were fortunate to have someone as articulate as Forrest Breyfogle III to write the response. However, rather than…
Do You Have Leptokurtophobia? The abnormal need for normal distributions
Wed, 08/05/2009 - 05:00
The symptoms of leptokurtophobia are (1) routinely asking if your data are normally distributed and (2) transforming your data to make them appear to be less leptokurtic and more “mound shaped.” If you have exhibited either of these symptoms then…
Good Limits From Bad Data What if the range chart is “out of control?”
Mon, 07/06/2009 - 03:00
Some authors recommend that you have to wait until you have the range chart “in control” before you can compute the limits for the average chart or the X chart. Why this is not true will be the subject of this column. To illustrate the issues we…
When Can We Trust the Limits On a Process Behavior Chart? Don’t the outliers distort the limits?
Tue, 05/26/2009 - 13:55
Last month we showed the X chart in figure 1. The four lowest values and the three highest values were seen to be “outliers” when we looked at the histogram. When we fitted a bell-shaped curve to the histogram, the outliers corrupted the model and…
All Outliers Are Evidence Removing the extreme values is always a serious mistake.
Sun, 05/03/2009 - 15:07
Many have been taught that they must remove outliers prior to analysis. This is because much of modern statistics is concerned with creating a mathematical model for the data. Because all these models are created using algorithms, they tend to be…
No Data Have Meaning Without Context How should you organize and plot your data?
Tue, 03/31/2009 - 11:27
As Davis Balestracci frequently emphasized in his column, “RealWorldSPC,” published in Quality Digest for four years, it is fundamental to understand the context of the data before you begin to do any computations. It is the background for your…
Probability Models Don’t Generate Your Data Don’t start your analysis by asking, “How are these data distributed?”
Fri, 02/27/2009 - 10:19
The number of major hurricanes in the Atlantic since 1940 (as we considered in my February column, “First, Look at the Data”) are shown as a histogram in figure 1, below. Some analysts would begin their treatment of these data by considering…
First, Look at the Data What can we learn from the historical record?
Thu, 01/29/2009 - 14:03
I recently received a data set consisting of the number of major hurricanes in the North Atlantic from 1940 to 2007. (Major hurricanes are those that reach Category 3 status or higher at some point during their existence.) The first step in…