Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/09/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]- --IMA.Boundary.698075378 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: cc:Mail note part Stephen, you're right on. The best view on statistics that I've heard goes something like this... Politicians use statistics in the same way that Drunks use lamp-posts...for support rather than illumination. (I don't know which way Di's dead driver used lamp-posts, however). Either way, for $2000 (with rebate effect) cost, the (name your M problem here, eg frame counter) design, materials, and production methods that have been used for 40 years shouldn't be producing ANY problems today. The debates over Confidence Intervals and all this other Quantitative Methods stuff is, IMHO, irrelevant (and not interesting either). When Sonke (for German language sticklers, I can't produce the umlaut over the 'o' in his name, some people use an 'h' to substitute) replies to me with details of when plastic was substituted, for what serial #'s, for what components, & other design changes, etc, I'll post it to the group. I believe it to be around 179xxxx. Alistair ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Surveys Author: Stephen Kobrin <kobrins@wharton.upenn.edu> at Internet Date: 9/6/97 12:24 PM While I am not a statistician, I use statistics frequently. All of the comments about sampling, confidence intervals and the like are certainly relevant, but not the whole story. There is a big difference between being able to say precisely that 26.5% of all M6s have some sort of defect and that something does not smell quite right in the state of Denmark. I certainly would like an M6, but spending the $1900 or so a new one would cost would be a big step for me. While perfect quality control exists only in one's imagination, defects should be very few and far between in Leica production. A defect rate of 10% or even 5% is much too high for Leica, given the cost of the camera. Furthermore, they have been doing this for a while; the data are not for the first few models of a new run. If you pull a few marbles out of a big jar that is supposed to contain only white marbles and the three of the first six are red, you certainly cannot say with any certainty that 50% of the marbles in the jar are red. You do know, however, that there are red marbles where none should be. Moral; don't throw the baby out with the bath water. There is a reasonable chance that there are problems with recent production that exceed what we have a right to expect as "normal" under the circumstances. Steve - --IMA.Boundary.698075378 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; name="RFC822 message headers" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: cc:Mail note part Content-Disposition: inline; filename="RFC822 message headers" Received: from ns2.baxter.com (159.198.1.38) by ccmailgw.mcgawpark.baxter.com with SMTP (IMA Internet Exchange 2.1 Enterprise) id 001A7DCD; Sat, 6 Sep 97 11:59:10 - -0500 Received: from mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (mejac.palo-alto.ca.us [192.147.236.1]) by ns2.baxter.com (8.8.0/8.8.0) with ESMTP id MAA11582 for <stewara@baxter.com>; Sat, 6 Sep 1997 12:07:13 -0500 (CDT) Received: from by mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (5.65/KJV) id AA18328for stewara@baxter.com; Sat, 6 Sep 97 09:27:25 -0700 Received: from XMAN.WHARTON.UPENN.EDU by mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (5.65/KJV) id AA18322for /usr/local/lib/majordomo/wrapper resend -C /usr/local/lib/majordomo/config.mejac/majordomo.cf -l leica-users -h mejac.palo-alto.ca.us leica-users-outgoing@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us; Sat, 6 Sep 97 09:27:21 -0700 Received: from Carol.upenn.edu (TS13-03.UPENN.EDU [128.91.202.140]) by xman.wharton.upenn.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id MAA10391 for <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>; Sat, 6 Sep 1997 12:23:57 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19970906122400.00683b2c@xman.wharton.upenn.edu> X-Sender: kobrin@xman.wharton.upenn.edu X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Sat, 06 Sep 1997 12:24:02 -0400 To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us From: Stephen Kobrin <kobrins@wharton.upenn.edu> Subject: Surveys Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us Precedence: bulk Reply-To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us - --IMA.Boundary.698075378--