Quality Quiz:

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We are sorry to report that Kohl Minor, quality manager for Blackern Dirt Coal Mining, and his boss, Hal Zangels, were both sent to a subsidiary of Blackern's mining operations in Hunan, China, and we have lost track of them, although we expect to receive holiday greetings and look forward to learning how they are doing.

Their replacements in the company's U.S. operations are quality manager Polly Yurathane and Hyde N. Sikh, plant manager. A farewell party for Kohl and Hal was followed by universal cheering to greet the new team.

Polly has had little experience in mining, but has participated in a number of SPC courses and workshops related to process management. She is eager to discover whether Hyde N. Sikh will support her efforts to gather and analyze data in the plant.

Polly studies the data that Kohl Minor had gathered relating to estimating cost by using multiple regression (below):

Since Hyde does not seem to understand the printout, Polly provides the following equation:

When Hyde makes a statement about the meaning of the t value of 3.162, which he assumes refers to the number of tons mined in an hour of work, Polly knows that this assumption is not valid. However, she is working to gain the trust of her boss in their new relationship and is not eager to offend him by telling him he’s wrong.

How can she approach this matter tactfully?

a) She can agree with Hyde N. Sikh, since she knows that the charts will be used to improve production and he will never actually see them again;

b) Or, she can come clean, telling him that the t value is used to test the significance of a regression coefficient.

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