I am in charge of a workshop for the American Society for Andrology for their 32nd Annual Conference in Tampa Florida. This society holds a laboratory workshop every year, and this year, it is being split into two workshops:

• Sperm Morphology -A Hands-On Workshop, from 8am to 11:30am, and
• Quality Control -A Hands-On Workshop, from 1:30pm to 4:30pm.

I will be teaching the afternoon workshop along with Dr. Steven Schrader. Some brief details about both classes are on the web:

• a preliminary schedule,
• a flier in PDF format, and
• a brochure in PDF format.

I am developing some material for this class, including a team exercise. Some additional material will come from

• Stats #17: Using statistics to monitor and improve quality

though I will shorten this section and add material about Analysis of Means (ANOM). Some preliminary weblog entries about ANOM are

• Stats: When is a control chart not a control chart? (created 2007-02-06)
• Stats: Some resources for Analysis of Means (created 2006-06-30, updated 2007-02-01)

I want to use some published examples of control charts, and some possible journal articles that I might want to review include

• Developing national outcome standards for the management of gonorrhoea and genital chlamydia in genitourinary medicine clinics. N. Low, J. Welch, K. Radcliffe. Sex Transm Infect 2004: 80(3); 223-9. [Medline] [Abstract] [Full text] [PDF]
• Increasing adherence to a community-based guideline for acute sinusitis through education, physician profiling, and financial incentives. R. A. Greene, H. Beckman, J. Chamberlain, G. Partridge, M. Miller, D. Burden, J. Kerr. Am J Manag Care 2004: 10(10); 670-8. [Medline] [PDF]
• Control, compare and communicate: designing control charts to summarise efficiently data from multiple quality indicators. B. Guthrie, T. Love, T. Fahey, A. Morris, F. Sullivan. Qual Saf Health Care 2005: 14(6); 450-4. [Medline] [Abstract] [Full text] [PDF]
• An adaptation of quality control chart methods to bacterial vaccine potency testing. H. C. Batson, M. Brown, M. Oberstein. J Bacteriol 1951: 61(4); 407-19. [Medline] [PDF]
• Penicillin Assay and Its Control Chart Analysis. L. F. Knudsen, W. A. Randall. J Bacteriol 1945: 50(2); 187-200. [Medline] [PDF]
• Understanding variation for clinical governance: an illustration using the diagnosis and treatment of sore throat. T. Marshall, M. A. Mohammed, H. T. Lim. Br J Gen Pract 2002: 52(477); 277-83. [Medline] [PDF]
• Analysis of inadequate cervical smears using Shewhart control charts. W. N. Harrison, M. A. Mohammed, M. K. Wall, T. P. Marshall. BMC Public Health 2004: 4; 25. [Medline] [Abstract] [Full text] [PDF]

I want to review the Xbar and S charts, and some simple formulas for these charts can be found at

• www.qualityamerica.com/knowledgecente/knowctrX_Bar_Chart_Calculations.htm
• www.qualityamerica.com/knowledgecente/knowctrSigma_Chart_Calculations.htm
• www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pmc/section3/pmc32.htm
• www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pmc/section3/pmc321.htm
• www.sqconline.com/control-chart-variables-enter.html
• www.jcrinc.com/1436/
• syque.com/quality_tools/tools/Tools71.htm

I'll be putting all of this material together in the next couple of days.

A table of constants for the XBAR-S charts

 n A3    B3    B4  2 2.659 0     3.267  3 1.954 0     2.568  4 1.628 0     2.266  5 1.427 0     2.089  6 1.287 0.030 1.970  7 1.182 0.118 1.882  8 1.099 0.185 1.815  9 1.032 0.239 1.761 10 0.975 0.284 1.716 11 0.927 0.321 1.679 12 0.886 0.354 1.646 13 0.850 0.382 1.618 14 0.817 0.406 1.594 15 0.789 0.428 1.572 16 0.763 0.448 1.552 17 0.739 0.466 1.534 18 0.718 0.482 1.518 19 0.698 0.497 1.503 20 0.680 0.510 1.490 21 0.663 0.523 1.477 22 0.647 0.534 1.466 23 0.633 0.545 1.455 24 0.619 0.555 1.455 25 0.606 0.565 1.435

can be found at

• www.robertluttman.com/vms/Week5/page6.htm