Profound knowledge Deming

Before fitting a model to the data, it is often wise to look at the data and listen with our eyes to hear what the data is trying to tell us about the form the model might take. Profound knowledge [W. Deming (1986)] can usually be used to develop mechanistic models that are superior to off-the-shelf empirical models (see Section 1.4). 

Educating management is no less important. In particular, this includes education in areas that Deming called profound knowledge variation, psychology, and the theory of systems. These areas of knowledge are critical to the effective leadership of process improvement. 

Profound knowledge comprises four disciplines that Deming felt... 

Profound knowledge comprises four disciplines that Deming felt were fundamentally important to business statistics, or the mathematics of variation psychology the theory of knowledge and the theory of systems. We shall treat each of these briefly in order to illustrate the relevance of each to management. 

This chapter described what Deming called profound knowledge, essentially the particular branches of scientific knowledge applicable to leadership and management. The four branches are ... 

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