What do statistics and a man who reinvented car production have to do with world terrorism and its prevention? Everything.

1. Dr Deming and Terrorism
In 1983 I was living on a ship, working as one of several helmsmen. I like to think
that I was the best helmsman, and I certainly was one of the better ones. The reason for
this had nothing to do with talent, but rather my observation that while trying to maintain
a certain compass heading, the natural movements of the ocean and the dynamic response
of the ship would knock us off course a few degrees from our intended direction. Others
would immediately try and compensate for this by steering the ship back to the proper
heading. I, on the other hand, would wait after discovering that the vast majority of the
time this deviation was a natural periodic oscillation that centered about our desired
course. In other words, if I simply did nothing with the ship’s wheel, the ship, on its own,
would return to the desired course heading and then slowly deviate from the course again
but erring on the other side of our heading. This would occur over and over again to the
degree that we were seldom exactly on course, yet with surprising accuracy were
averaging our true desired heading.
The other helmsmen, immediately trying to compensate for any deviations when
they became apparent, were forcing the ship out of this natural cycle and into a
unpredictable state in which their navigational technique would force them to be ever
vigilant, constantly correcting our course. Over our assigned four hour watch, they would
generally be farther off course than if they had only made course corrections when there
was a sustained trend of the ship drifting off course.
. This is a natural response, much as one would correct their car’s path by
steering if they found themselves drifting to one side of the road. On a ship you have the
luxury of no roads and usually no other ship traffic so close that it would prove dangerous
to drift a little. So by my doing nothing to correct the course of the ship I was maintaining
a natural oscillation symmetrical about our desired heading, and by constantly steering to
try and stay on course, others were creating much more work for themselves and were far
less accurate in navigating the ship.
In the 1970s America was producing automobiles of such poor quality that it
opened the door for the far better made Japanese cars to come in and take a huge market
share, which they still enjoy to this day. One reason for this was an American named W.
Edwards Deming. He was best known as an applied statistician and taught that there were
really two types of production errors in any manufacturing process. The first type was
“special causes” This manufacturing defect was due to acutely controllable circumstances
such as poor quality tools being used on the production line. These problems could be
addressed directly and changed, in this case simply by retooling with higher quality
instruments. These were unsound production data points that could be chased down and
immediately addressed and solved. The second type of error was “normal variation” and
was caused by the elastic nature of any production process. Every existing type of
production facility can be viewed from a holistic standpoint in which man, machine, and
surroundings act as one coherent unit yet each component possesses its own inherent
variability. A simple example of this would be to ask any person to sign their name
several times. Although all the signatures will resemble each other, there will always be
differences. In fact, if there were no apparent differences, one would, and should, suspect
a forgery. Why? Because a reasonable level of variance in signatures is a normal

2. variation and should be expected, while a lack of apparent variance would signal the
strong possibility of forgery because it is now within the normal tolerance of perhaps a
copy machine, or a human forger, but not the original signer. So to chase down and try to
stamp out normal variation would be the same as asking that the signature of a person
remain unchanging in appearance to the human eye. This is unreasonable, unproductive
and a total waste of time.
If an industrial production line, for some reason, required a signature to be
produced that was unvarying to the human eye, one could address it constructively as a
“special cause” and perhaps have a stamp of the signature made as we see on “signed”
baseball gloves, or one could address this unproductively and unreasonably by telling the
person to stop visibly varying his signature which is outside the normal ability of any
human.
This fairly simple concept is what differentiated the American automakers from
the Japanese. The Japanese learned the difference between normal variation and special
causes, and that only the special causes should be immediately dealt with and that normal
variance could only be addressed to a certain extent and only as part of a long term plan.
The American companies did not really distinguish between the two types of production
variances and ended up chasing all the outlaying data points in an effort to stamp them
out, which was to their own detriment. American companies rejected Dr Deming and his
ideas, and so he went to Japan where his ideas were embraced. It wasn’t until the early
1980s that the American automakers began to adopt Dr Deming’s production philosophy.
The core of this philosophy is now known as Statistical Process Control.
Returning to the example of navigating a ship - to chase down every deviation
from the set course by trying to compensate by steering was trying to correct a normal
deviation and threw the ship into an unpredictable and chaotic path that required far too
much effort to correct, was less accurate in the end, and was costly in terms of excessive
vigilance. It was only the slow deviation from the heading, caused by ocean currents and
minor errors by the helmsman and inherent errors of the ship itself that were special
causes and needed to be addressed.
America, as with other nations, has always experienced terrorism both foreign and
domestic in origin. Though more complex than a factory setting, our geopolitical system
is just as susceptible to both the good and bad outcomes of Statistical Process Control.
The question is: what aspects of terrorism are normal deviations and what aspects are
“special cause”? We’ve seen that to chase after normal deviations are costly and
counterproductive. Certainly, to specifically go after those that have caused the terrorist
act, would likely be a special cause that needed to be addressed acutely and quickly.
However, to expect to eliminate terrorism by any acute action is not only unreasonable,
but impossible since this violence and rebellion is a normal part of society and is most
certainly a normal deviation, and percentagewise, a very small threat to life.
What I am saying is that if we wish to keep our present system, our civil rights
and liberties, we must learn to accept the occasional terrorist act. This does not mean that
we can not address terrorism long term, but it does mean that any actions that are
expected to yield immediate change will bring on chaotic results. If air pollution helps to
bring on asthma in children should we immediately shut down all hydrocarbon burning
power plants or close all businesses that spew out pollutants? The answer is “no” if we
don’t wish to throw the system in chaos, which may very well be a far worse outcome

3. even for the children suffering from asthma. We need to address this issue in a constant
and methodical way, allowing our infrastructure to adjust and adapt, thus not throwing
our system into disarray. In this pollution example, it is fairly straightforward solution
that the pollution must be mitigated, it must be reduced or eliminated while allowing the
system to adjust. And what about terrorism? Just as air pollution must be reduced or
eliminated, since it is a major cause of asthma, perhaps weapon technology sold overseas
should be reduced, or eliminated, in a constant and methodical way so as not to cause
chaos.
To expect anyone, or any organization or political system, to eliminate terrorism
while maintaining our current system and its permitted freedoms is absolutely
unreasonable. We need to make a choice. We can possibly reduce some of the risks of
terrorism while gambling that the resulting chaos that must result will not diminish our
way of life, much as Detroit gambled that they would remain competitive with the
Japanese car manufacturers prior to the mid-1980s. On the other hand we can proceed
rationally and methodically, a strategy that has yet to be tried.