April Fool’s Day (today) and the opening of baseball season (this Sunday) are upon us. To mark the first event, I’ll let my distinguished colleague Donald Wheeler make some eloquent and crucial statistical points that turn out to be, well, laughably simple. (No fooling!) Regarding the baseball connection, please bear with me.

Wheeler is one of the world’s leading W. Edwards Deming statistical experts, and he’s been an influential stealth mentor of mine for 30 years. He’s an excellent theoretician who can certainly get appropriately technical with statistics if he needs to; however, when he does, it’s usually to soundly deflate what Deming called “such nonsense” being taught today.

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