Sample Request: Fill & Download for Free

I have a few pet peeves that drive me nuts at work:A statistical sample size of one to drive a decision. Having one piece of data tells us that something happened once. So far we are in agreement. However, it does not tell me how likely it would occur again, or if it’s under statistical control. Let's not make important decisions with one data point if we can help it.Or someone tries something once and it failed, and decides it can’t work (Because no one else could possibly succeed. Think of Langley’s failed attempt at flight vs. the Wright Brothers).Or they tried something ten years ago, and thus it still can’t work. As if they haven’t learned anything. Or new technologies have not been introduced that may help make it a success (Apple’s Newton failed in the market, but later Palm Pilots' and the iPad were successful because technology finally matured enough).Or we have a defect, and we launch a big project to prevent it from occurring again (yeah, sometimes it’s needed, but how about we collect some more data before we change the entire paperwork processing system because one person lost a form).Here is an article that discusses small sample sizes: Law of Small Numbers (SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY) - iResearchNet.Not doing their own research. I get it. I’m the expert. But asking questions about things that you have ready access to is just wasting my time. Heck, because of you I’m going to work through my lunch so I have an hour of peace and quiet, or else I’m stuck working after you go home.Winging it. Making decision without have any data. Yeah, I get sometimes we are forced to pick an option, and no one really wants to go through “paralysis through analysis” as the other extreme. But I sat through a meeting where people wanted to change an entire system because “one person said to me that one sample request should have been a project”They had no idea which sample request they were speaking of.They had no idea even if that person was correct. It was just repeating a second-hand opinion as fact.Pulling me off a project to work on something else, and then asking me for a status update on the project I’m no longer working on. And then acting shocked that no progress was made.Meetings…Trying to get time with others….Here is one specific to projects that I can relate to…

“You don't swallow blood in blood transfusions.”Blood transfusions are always tricky to explain to patients and their attendants, as already mentioned in previous answers to this question. After convincing a relative to donate blood, taking a cross matching sample, requesting (pleading) the blood bank, and running around the hospital with blood packets as an intern, I really believed I had seen it all.However, this one really stunned me. There was this severely anaemic patient in the emergency room. After the trip to the blood bank and all the particulars were done, I’d finally come back with the blood, ready to transfuse. But while I was setting up her IV cannula, her husband asked, “Doctor, why do you want to poke her? Simply put the blood packet through the tube directly into her mouth. She will swallow it.” Obviously I couldn't explain to him the entire physiology of the human body… but I did tell him that it doesn't work like that, and he obliged.Poor wife did get a poke!

Some ideas:I would recommend approaching Philippe Beaudette at the Wikimedia Foundation to ask him what the best approach is to get your project featured in the Wikimedia Blog. I'd also try to get Signpost to cover it.If you email me a sample request, I may be able to advise you how you might improve it. If I get particularly excited, I may send some out myself - that's likely to be more successful, but is also likely not scalable.You can ask a chapter to take the project on, and they could send the requests out on letterhead.