Statistics the “science” behind disinformation
CALGARY, AB, Aug. 1, 2013/Troy Media/ – Statistics. Now there’s a word that strikes fear into the hearts of first year college students and boredom into everyone else. Say the ‘S’ word at a party and watch people make for the exits. If economics...
Data from StatCan’s National Household Survey worthless
CALGARY, AB, May. 16, 2013/ Troy Media/ – There is much talk today of ‘big data’. As our world goes digital, companies, governments, not-for-profits, and organizations of all sorts obtain vast quantities of data about, well, virtually everything....
The Art of Riding a Dead Horse
CALGARY — In Red Deer, Alberta, they’re worried about the loss of locally dispatched ambulance services. Alberta Health Services will be centralizing the function. It was centralized once before but it didn’t work out. <Read the Full...
Alberta Health Services report childish nonsense
CALGARY, AB, Dec. 16, 2012/ Troy Media- Alberta Edition/ – Timing is everything. I had just accepted an invitation to speak on performance measurement and reporting at the International Deming Research Seminar at Fordham University in New York when...
The cost of corporate and government dishonesty
CALGARY, AB, Dec. 5, 2012/ Troy Media/ – On Friday, March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake of the coast of Japan wreaked havoc, damaging structures and generating a tsunami greatly amplifying the destruction and loss of life. It also triggered a...
Government has a capacity problem
CALGARY, AB, Nov. 18, 2012/ Troy Media/ – Lacey-Jones McKnight was found dead in her car last month, allegedly murdered by a former boyfriend who had been stalking her for weeks. Lacey’s family placed numerous phone calls for help to the Calgary Police...
the bottom line
The bottom line is Converge Group’s Robert Gerst bi-monthly column for Troy Media. It’s the only regular Canadian column dedicated to Quality and Evidenced-based Management. The bottom line has appeared in The Province, The Calgary Herald,...
Food Quality in the Modern Age
The news concerning E. coli contamination of beef products from the XL Foods plant near Brooks Alberta has not been good. People have lost their jobs, consumers have become ill, the product recall has expanded across North America, the company is experiencing...
Sturgeons Revelation, more right than we knew
CALGARY, AB, Oct 4, 2012/ Troy Media/ – Responding to a critics observation that most science fiction is junk, writer Theodore Sturgeon noted that the same could be said for just about everything. Sturgeon’s Revelation, also referred to as...
employee drug testing
numbers aren’t always what they seem Suncor Energy, Total E&P Canada and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. recently announced a pilot study of randomized drug testing as part of the Drug and Alcohol Risk Reduction Pilot Project (DARRPP). Workers...