SCRIPT: 1A Kevin Dunn Experimentation for Improvement

Why experiments are so important

Folder, with all the scripts for the online course, Experimentation for Improvement.
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When was the last time you ran an experiment?

Seriously -- I’d like you to think about it for a minute. Pause the video and
maybe even write down a few notes.

OK we’re back. Running experiments is really important, we do it all the

time. Whether we are making food, trying to find the fastest bus, or the
shortest distance on a map.

We also run experiments on our family and friends; we learn very quickly
as children what makes our parents happy or upset. We run experiments
on our partners, our spouses, and maybe even with our colleagues at
work.In fact, the only way to learn anything about a system is to disturb it
and then observe it.

I tell my students : "if you stop experimenting, you’ve given up on life!" and
I really believe that. I'm Kevin Dunn, from McMaster University in Hamilton,
Canada.

I work in the Chemical Engineering department, but this course is not going
to be about Chemical Engineering. My goal is to make the next 5 modules
you are about to learn, the most interesting course you will be able to take
online. This one is going to be memorable and useful.

I am going to teach you skills that you can use anywhere in your life - and
you don't need a University degree to learn them.
This course is about running experiments efficiently.What do I mean by
that? Efficiency is doing the least amount of work and getting the most
amount of information. For those of you that work in companies, you know
that you almost never get a chance to do experiments at work. So when
you get that chance, you have to make sure that you get it right the first
time.

Now lets take a look at some examples.

The small things in life matter. Let's take a look at boiling water; something
we have all done before. The aim with this experiment is to find the setting
that uses the lowest total energy. And because energy equals dollars, we
want to reduce energy consumed as far as possible.

For our experiment, we have two pots: a glass pot and a metal pot. We
have electrical heat which we can adjust to a low, or high setting. We can
use the lid or leave the pot open.

So we have several combinations now, and I’m sure you can guess which
combination will use the lowest amount of energy. We kind of have that
intuitive understanding from having boiled water before.

Here’s a quiz however that shows the different combinations. Take a look
at the options for a minute, and pick the setting you think will have the
lowest total energy.

We are going to come back to this example in a future class and take a
look at some actual numbers. But if you have the tools, how about trying
that experiment yourself before the next time?

Something many of us have also tried before is growing plants. There are
many things you can change. For example:

● how much water do you feed the plant each day?

● what is the best time to give the plant water: morning or evening?
● which type of plant pot should you use (ones with holes or no holes at
the bottom)?
● what happens if you put a plastic cover over the plant (to simulate a
greenhouse) or leave it open?
● what is the effect of fertilizer or no fertilizer?

Now there are too many combinations and we are not sure what the best
one will be unless we do the experiments to test them.

Another example is a car’s gas mileage; some people call it fuel efficiency.
The gas mileage is a number that tells you how far you can drive your car
on one liter of gas (or petrol, as some of you might call it). To improve fuel
efficiency you might consider the following:

● should you drive with the windows open or closed?

● does the air-conditioner have a really strong effect on the gas
mileage?
● what about tire pressure: by how much does it affect fuel efficiency if
the tires are not fully pumped up?
● can we spend more money and buy petrol that has a high octane
rating; is that going to be worth the extra cost?
● and you might also consider how gas mileage decrease if there are
people in the car.

Once again, we may have a good idea of how each one of these factors
affects the gas milage, but what about the combinations of them? For
example: you can have fully pumped tires, but what happens if you load
the car with many people then?
Google, and other web-based companies are trying experiments on us all
the time. Go to this page for an example, and take a look at Google’s
experiment on YouTube in 2009. In this experiment they were considering
the layout and colour of the page.

There were 1024 combinations that they tested. And the most successful
setting increased the number of user sign-ups by nearly 16%. The best
combination could not have easily been guessed, or found efficiently by
trial and error.

One of the students I teach in my class at McMaster recently tried

optimizing the strength of a concrete cladding that can be used on
buildings. He tested several factors:

● the ratio of of water:cement;

● adding plant or cellulose fibres to the concrete;
● if adding steel mesh to see if that improved the strength;
● and a few other factors.

These initial experiments helped him eliminate factors that were not
influencing the concrete’s strength, and then left him with only a few factors
that really mattered. He confirmed his predictions that adding plant material
reduced the concrete strength, but after his experiments he had a
quantitative idea of how just much it reduced concrete strength, not just a
guess.

Companies are experimenting with all sorts of ways to improving their

concrete. Here’s an interesting example of a company that’s now adding
recycled construction waste and old building materials into their new
concrete.
One common theme in all these examples is that they have two features:

1. there is an objective to improve something, and

2. there are two or more factors we can change to make that
improvement.

So there’s an outcome we want to improve, and there are factors. We’ll

learn more about these terms in the next video.

So I have just given you several examples to consider. What I'd like you to
do now, is to take some time, and think of your own experiment that you
can work on during the time that you take this course.

Write out the topic, and consider how you can use that to improve your life.

Consider a topic that can improve your community; or a topic that you can
even use at work.

Even better, I'd like you to perhaps make a short video about it, upload the
video to YouTube, and share the link on the forums, over here. Describe
your idea with all of us in this course.

I'm going to remind you about that again. But for now, please get started
with the next video.