The American Statistical Association (ASA) was founded in Boston, Massachusetts (which makes it the second oldest continuously operating professional society in the US).

If you were ever wondering why there are so many experts so adept at manipulating statistics to support whatever viewpoint they are selling, it’s because you’ve had the best professionals working together to improve the art for even longer than you have had professionals working together to improve science and engineering. (The IEEE is only 53 years old, and the associations that formed — namely the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Institute of Radio Engineers — would only be 132 years and 104 years, respectively.)

And for those of you relatively new to Sourcing Innovation, particularly those who would like more insight into lies, damn lies, and statistics, we’d like to remind you that, in the archives, Pinky and the Brain (back in the days when they were locked in the basement of a building in Massachusetts that was the headquarters of a major sourcing company before it was acquired) gave us a lesson in statistics that exposed some of the, well, lies. Enjoy!