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In other words, the fact that the criterion we happen to use has a fine ancestry of highbrow statistical theorems does not justify its use. Such justification must come from empirical evidence that it works.

— Walter A. Shewhart

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More quotes by Walter A. Shewhart

Postulate 1. All chance systems of causes are not alike in the sense that they enable us to predict the future in terms of the past.

Broadly speaking, the object of industry is to set up economic ways and means of satisfying human wants and in so doing to reduce everything possible to routines requiring a minimum amount of human effort.

Rule 1. Original data should be presented in a way that will preserve the evidence in the original data for all the predictions assumed to be useful.

Both pure and applied science have gradually pushed further and further the requirements for accuracy and precision. However, applied science, particularly in the mass production of interchangeable parts, is even more exacting than pure science in certain matters of accuracy and precision.

Progress in modifying our concept of control has been and will be comparatively slow. In the first place, it requires the application of certain modern physical concepts; and in the second place it requires the application of statistical methods which up to the present time have been for the most part left undisturbed in the journal in which they appeared.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Walter A. Shewhart (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.