Chapter Number and Title 813 Post-Exam Topic Analysis of Variance chap15.2EY 7/31/02 2:41 PM Page 813 A 814 Chapter Number and Title W. EDWARDS DEMING Statistics in the Service of Quality From one point of view, statistics is about understanding variation. Reducing variation in products and processes is the central theme of statistical quality control. So it is not surprising that a statistician should become the leading guru of quality management. In the final decades of his long life, W. Edwards Deming (1900?1993) was one of the world?s most influential con- sultants to management. Deming grew up in Wyoming and earned a doctorate in physics at Yale. Working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the 1930s, he became