[Book Review] Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control by Walter A. Shewhart

This is the book who has the most influenced my life (the book I keep near my bed to re-read it from time to time ! ): yes I know it seems bizarre that I could make such a strong assertion about a book that just seem to deal with stupid statistics, doesn't it :)

But it isn't written by anybody but by the father of Modern Quality Management Walter A. Shewhart the spiritual father of Edwards Deming who was asked by General Mc Arthur to teach Quality Control to the Japanese - and everybody knows what the result was...

In truth General Mc Arthur wanted Walter Shewhart to come to Japan but Shewhart couldn't go so far or maybe he didn't want to (so that it was finally Deming who was his best student and friend). Why ? because Walter Shewhart claimed he had never succeeded to teach his Philosophy to the American Engineers because they took Quality Control as primarily ... mathematics. In another book from Edwards Demings, this latter wrote that the reason they succeeded to do the teaching of Shewhart was that the Japanese did hate ... mathematics, astonishing no !

So maybe you guess what I mean: this book is less about statistics than about Epistemology of Mathematics and Science. And this may explain why there are two readers on Amazon site who claimed to have a good background in statistics but not enough though and complained that the book should be read by higher grade students in statistics because they had difficulty to understand it. They are just what Shewhart complains about: students who learnt formula without really understanding. In fact he's not alone, Richard Feynman did write a chapter precisely untitled "learning without understanding" in his book "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman".

Unfortunately Shewhart had not the talent to be as amusing as Mr Feynman so if you have no special interest in the field this book may not be for you. But if you are interested in stuffs like financial risk management or six sigma in Quality field then it may be for you. You would then understand why concepts like VAR (Value at Risk) in Finance or Six Sigma in Quality Control can be dangerous if taken litteraly.