Baseline performance measurement (day 16-17)

Now, we are ready to calculate the current performance capability. But before we do that, it would be worthwhile to revise some basic statistics.

Statistics can be of two types: descriptive and inferential. Descriptive statistics describe characteristics about a population or a sample of data. Inferential statistics involves drawing inferences about the characteristics of a population from a sample of data. Lean Six Sigma mostly employs inferential statistics.

One of the fundamental concepts in statistics is that of probability. Probability is the likelihood that an event or outcome will occur. When these probabilities are plotted against the different values of the event or outcome, we get a probability distribution. For example, the likelihood of a head or a tail turning up when we toss a coin is 0.5 each. If we plot the outcomes of the toss when the coin has been tossed a large number of times, we get the probability distribution curve for the...