Just a note. My sense is that Deming would be quite opposed to a number
of notions found below. The developmental language is somewhat similar to
Taylor's notion that workers were (genetically and developmentally) lazy
and ignorant, incapable of being knowledgeable and trustworthy.
Henry Thomas
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On Mon, 17 May 1999, Robert Bacal wrote:
> On 14 May 99 at 5:23, John Zavacki wrote:
>
> > Proponents of W.E. Deming (a group in which I claim membership)
> > would smile at the fifty percent figure. Dr. Deming believed that
> > in all systems, including education and government, fifty percent of
> > behaviors are below the mean and fifty percent above. That, of
> > course, is one of the characteristics of the normal distribution, a
> > descriptive statistic, not a probablistic one.
>
> Interesting the responses to T.J. Elliot's posts. Haven't seen a
> response that commented on the "developmental" part, which I suppose
> illustrates how our mental models help us project meaning onto
> things.
>
> When I was in grad school there was a beginning interest in
> evaluating the degree to which adults achieved Piaget's formal
> operations stage, a pre-requisite (theoretically) for dealing with
> both abstractions and more complex moral reasoning. At that time the
> research suggested---guess what--that only about 50% of adults
> reached that as a developmental stage.
>
> One theory of developmental stages is they are at least somewhat
> genetically (or developmentally) determined. Hence the hypothesis
> that it can't be taught since for some percentage of people there is
> a ceiling to their development in that area.
>
> If this line of thinking is correct, it accounts for much of what
> happens in our world.
-- Henry B. Thomas hthomas@unf.edu http://www.unf.edu/coas/polsci-pubadmin"You want to see an example of a perfect process? You already have a perfect process. Every process you have is perfect. They are perfect for the results that you are getting." W. Edward Deming
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