Professor Goh Thong Ngee's Home Page

One doesn't fight the Peter Principle.
-- T N Goh, Quality for Life. 1997.
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
-- Bertrand Russell, BRSHP

What is life but a series of inspired follies?
-- Henry Higgins, Act II, Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, 1914
At the end of the path of steepest ascent is a stationary point.
-- T N Goh, Quality for Life, 1997

LIZA: (To Colonel Pickering)... You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.
-- Act Five, Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, 1914

If you have to tell people that you're World Class, you aren't.
-- T.N.Goh, Personal observations, 1997

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
-- Richard P. Feynman, Personal Observations on the Reliability of the Shuttle, 1987

When something can be learned with little effort, great effort has gone into its teaching.
-- T.N. Goh, in Lecture notes of CN4222, 1996.

I don't think anything is intrinsically boring in this world - including Statistics.
-- Yo-Yo Ma, Interview in Singapore, 1999

I was dismayed by the emphasis of statistics departments on matters that seemed of little interest to anyone but themselves...
-- G.E.P. Box, in "Statistics as a Catalyst to Learning by Scientific Method", Journal of Quality Technology, 31 (1),1999, 16-29

A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree of certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world is suffering.
-- Bertrand Russell, WIANAC, 1957

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
---- Auric Goldfinger, in Goldfinger by Ian L. Fleming: quoted by T N Goh to describe the performance of referees at matches that eliminated Portugal, Italy and Spain at the FIFA World Cup 2002
Only satisfied customers can give people job security. Not companies.
-- Jack Welch, Jack, Straight From the Gut, 2001
Quality means not having to say you're sorry.
-- T.N. Goh, Quality for Life, 1999

I have never seen any solid evidence that ISO/QS certification alone has resulted in reduced variability, higher yields, safer and more reliable products, or better "quality".
-- D. C. Montgomery, in Some Thoughts on ISO/QS Registration, QREI 17(1), 2001

SIX SIGMA WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR BELTS!!
-- T N Goh, On Six Sigma certification, 2001

Why are we paying for the local papers? Most of the time they're overwhelmed with "4D's" in Part I: Disasters, Disputes, Disgraces, Demonstrations... and "4F's" in Part II: Food, Fashion, Fitness, Finance... Not to mention those boastful ads all over the place: I don't blame people who don't read "newspapers".
-- T N Goh, IE 5002 lecture, 2008

The ability to recognize the existence and consequences of variation is vital for a realistic view of the world we live in. In fact the age-old concept of wuchang (无常) says it all.
-- T N Goh, IE5002 lecture, 2008