William G. Hunter

Books

• Statistics for Experimenters: An Introduction to Design, Data Analysis, and Model Building
  See new Statistics for Experimenters - Second Edition
  Or view this classic text used widely in universities and corporations for over 20 years.

• Statistics for Experimenters: Design, Innovation, and Discovery
  Second Edition of this classic.

Articles

• 101 Ways to Design an Experiment, or Some Ideas About Teaching Design of Experiments   view details
  A great article sharing ideas on teaching and learning about Design of Experiments (DoE), a powerful and greatly underutilized tool. 6 simga efforts have greatly increased the use of DoE.

• The Next 25 Years in Statistics   view details
  (with contributions by Joseph W. Duncan, A. Blanton Godfrey, Brian L. Joiner, Gary C. McDonald, Charles G. Pfeifer, Donald W. Marquardt, and Ronald D. Snee). A transformation of the American style of management has already begun; in order for it to succee

• Studies in Quality Improvement: Designing Environmental Regulations   view details
  "this report outlines a framework, which is based upon statistical quality control concepts, for designing environmental regulations... With slight modifications, the framework outlined in this report can be applied to the design of standards of all kinds

• Managing Our Way to Economic Success: Two Untapped Resources   view details
  "American organizations could compete much better at home and abroad if they would learn to tap the potential information inherent in all processes and the creativity inherent in all employees."

• Doing More With Less in the Public Sector: A Progress Report from Madison, Wisconsin   view details
  "The new quality improvement ideas can help public officials combat the effects of decreasing budgets just as they help private businesses increase productivity." Published in Quality Progress, July 1987.

• A Useful Method for Model-Building II: Synthesizing Response Functions from Individual Components   view details
  "Analyzing which components of a response are due to each factor is an alternative way to find the best model for studying the properties of a product or process (and thus for improving both)." Published in Technometrics.

• A Useful Method For Model-Building   view details
  "The object of much experimentation is to build or discover a suitable model. This is done by an iterative procedure in which a particular model is tentatively entertained, strained in various ways over the region of applicat.ion, and its defects found. The nature of the defects interacting with the experimenter’s technical knowledge can suggest changes and remedies leading to a new model which, in turn, is tentatively entertained, and submitted to a similar straining process."

• A useful method for model-building II: Synthesizing response functions from individual components   view details
  "There is a vast difference between quality control and quality improvement, passive statistical tools such as Shewhart control charts are useful for quality control, to determine whether the process under surveillance shows any signs of going out of its state of statistical control. On the other hand, more active tools are needed for quality and productivity improvement. In order to improve a process or a product, it is often helpful to use experimental designs in developing a mathematical equation or set of equations to relate the response(s) of interest to important process and environmental variables. Such models can aid in understanding how the relevant processes work so they can be modified in desirable ways. This report contains a practical suggestion that model-builders may find helpful. It involves synthesizing response functions of interest by starting with the simpler task of constructing models for component responses or subsets of them."

Author Quotes

• Two resources, largely untapped in American organizations, are potential information and employee creativity

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  Managing Our Way to Economic Success

• Quality, productivity, and innovation can be significantly increased if companies provide all employees with practical tools for exploiting potential information.

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  Managing Our Way to Economic Success

• Once you get some data it does away with a lot of arguments and people can work as a team going after the biggest problems.

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Web sites

• William G. Hunter
• Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement
  Founded in 1985 by George E.P. Box and the William Hunter at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. The technical report series is one of the best online management resources with reports authors including: George Box, W. Edwards Deming, Peter Scholtes, Kaoru Ishikawa, William Hunter, Gipsie Ranney and Brian Joiner. Sadly the center has abandoned the ideas of George Box and Bill Hunter. It once was a very important center for thought about management improvement. The legacy left by Box and Hunter has been lost. I find this very sad and a huge insult to the memories of those great men. Bill Hunter was my father and built the Center after he was diagnosed with fatal cancer because it was a useful way to provide benefit to the world. Seeing that cause abandoned I find insulting and extremely unfortunate for all those that no longer have the possibility of benefiting from the vision of Box and Hunter through the center. Thankfully many people that learned from them have continued to build upon their work. And their books, writing and other material continue to inspire those interested in management improvement.
• Statistics for Experimenters
  Web site for the classic book on design of experiments. Includes a search engine for statistics sites for managers.
• Life and Legacy of William G. Hunter
  George Box, Stuart Hunter and Bill wrote what has become a classic text for experimenters in scientific and business circles, Statistics for Experimenters. Bill also was a leader in the emergence of the management improvement movement. George Box and Bill co-founded the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Bill Hunter was also the founding chair of the ASQ statistics division.