Description: This paper addresses the success stories about how continuous process improvement programs and the use of statistical methods have cut costs in companies while improving the quality of products. Suggestions regarding implementation are presented. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1993, VOL. 1.

Description: Users of statistical packages should be more aware of the influence that outlying data points can have on their statistical analyses. Robust procedures provide formal methods to spot these outliers and reduce their influence. While a few robust procedures are mentioned in this article, one is emphasized and it is motivated by maximum likelihood estimation to make it seem more natural. In this article, the author will try to provide some background, beginning with maximum likelihood estimation of one parameter, that will hopefully make robust estimation seem natural and rather easy.