Statistics for Six Sigma Green Belts with Minitab and JMP

5.4. The Binomial Distribution

Many studies involve probability distributions that are based on attribute data in which the outcomes of a variable (CTQ or CTP) are in only two categories, arbitrarily called success or failure, defect or conforming, or on-time or late. When classifying each event studied as either a success or a failure, which outcome is classified as a success and which one is classified as a failure is not important. For example, in the context of statistical process control (see Chapter 11), an item that has failed inspection could be classified as a success since the goal in process control is usually to study nonconformance. In such circumstances, you can use the binomial probability distribution to analyze the number of ...