Clemency

Hubby has started another semester of grad classes. Finally, he has gotten past most of the fru-fru courses and is on to the "good stuff." This semester he is taking a DOE class. No, that's not a department in the State of Minnesota. It stands for Design of Experiments.

To me, this is nirvana. I love this stuff. It's not about how to set up equipment to do experiments, but how to create a statistical plan to test for and block variables in your design and eliminate noise. It's all about statistics. Statistics. Statistics. A real class, with a real answer, not just the "I'm OK, you're OK" mentality and not the kind of "statistics" you hear about in the news. Not any touchy-feely stuff either. Down and dirty numbers. This is where my true inner geek thrives. For a time one summer before I graduated from St. Thomas, I pondered being an actuary. However, even I wasn't geeky enough for that.

Bad news is that one of the books for hubby's class, a paperback, is not even an inch thick and it costs $45.

I did some DOEs at Boeing. Nowadays, if you work for most medical device or chip manufacturers, they are big on DOE. They even have programs for Six Sigma and if you climb high enough in the stats world you become a Black Belt. I never took any of these classes, but would've loved to have made it to Black Belt.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my sweet daughter has been working to rid our home of bad influences. She's almost two and a half, so isn't teething any more and certainly isn't hungry, so the only reason I have for her trying to eat the library copy hubby used of The DaVinci Code for his prior class, is that she is trying to take one for the team, sacrificing her own well-being so that we don't read this drivel.


I just hope the library finds her actions as noble as I do.