If you combine tough economic times with a presidential election year, you get a heightened interest in how the economy is changing. Is it growing faster or slowing down? Unsurprisingly, there are many contradictory predictions about what will happen over the longer term. You’ll find countless TV pundits pushing their opinions.

A lot of attention focuses on the quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) growth. I’m going to explore what you can learn about this particular economic measure from statistical techniques and actual data. By the end of this blog, you’ll understand what you can and cannot infer from these economic growth estimates.

To do this, I’m going to use a tool near and dear to the hearts of quality improvement analysts: a control chart. This will be a three-part blog running on consecutive days. The final part will appear after the latest announcement from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) about GDP growth. We’ll see what we can make of it using the insights we gain.

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