This article reprises the themes raised by our earlier post Deming's inconvenient truth, and makes an attempt to draw some additional sense from the apparent paradox. For this article we have Hilary Burrage to offer some credit to, for posing a question on the LinkedIn forum that got some pennies dropping

Let's start the story at the beginning. Sometime in 2005 we were on our way back home on a Thai Air flight from Jakarta to Heathrow, via Bangkok. In Bangkok we were joined by a casually dressed, youngish Englishman. One look told us he had some money because his clothes and shoes looked expensive, as was his seat on the plane. After a while we got talking. We told him what we did, he told me what he did. Turned out he was a professional gambler living in Thailand. We were immediately captivated by the glamour of his chosen profession, he seemed keen to talk and while away the hours, we were keen to listen. So in the intervening 12 hours or so we got a pretty good insight into the life of a professional gambler

Well, surprise surprise, it's not all glamour and it's not all luck. They were key facts numbers one and two. The man was a statistician by education, a former mathematics teacher of all things, who had turned a knowledge of statistics to his advantage in the arena of sports betting. The trick to making a profit in the longer term was, apparently, to have an ability to identify when the bookies have got the odds wrong. That's when you place your bets. They don't all come off, but the odds start slanting your way as opposed to the way of the bookie. Being able to identify when the odds were wrong involved a working knowledge of statistics, and a better knowledge of the event than the bookie appeared to have, and that usually involved some very painstaking research. He was based in Thailand because the bookies in South East Asia get the odds wrong more often than they do elsewhere. Makes sense

So what were his strategies? Well, here are some that we can remember:


* Bet with a clear head. If you have a favourite team, leave it alone
* Avoid accumulator bets. With each accumulated event, the odds lurch further the way of the bookie
* Do your research. Pick, say, ten football teams a year and study them continually. Find out which games they tend to win, which they lose, which players appear to be key, injury situations etc. This will all give you a clear advantage over the lazier bookies
* Stick to sports you like and understand. You'll have to study hard, but it will be easier for you if you happen to enjoy the game
* Steer clear of boxing


There were a few others, but that gives a feel for it

Very interesting, (you may say) but what's this all got to do with Deming? This is (supposed to be) a quality improvement blog, is it not?

Well there is a point to this tale, and here it is

Remember in the earlier post, Deming's inconvenient truth, we identified that Deming taught that management decisions should wherever possible be based on hard facts and evidence? But also that a lot of management information is both unknown and unknowable? Well that summarises in a nutshell that business is one big lottery. There are no certainties, and for every success there is a failure. If all management information was knowable there would be a scientific formula to remove all elements of risk from the decision making process. But it isn't and there isn't. That is a lot like the world of professional gambling. All bets carry an inherent risk, and professional gamblers accept risk and occasional failure as an unavoidable fact of life. HOWEVER the most successful gamblers use as much Management Information as they can get their hands on to slant the odds their way

That, we propose, is probably as close to an absolute definition of "Management Information", its uses and limitations, that you're ever likely to get

As definitions go, it is a bit on the long side. Sorry