STATE COLLEGE, PA- Minitab Inc., a provider of software for quality improvement and statistics education, seeks to make statistics more accessible online through theMinitab Blog .

Contributors to the blog include statistical trainers, technical writers, tech support specialists and other experts. With new content added each weekday, Minitab Blog authors write about quality improvement and statistics as they apply to their everyday lives and coincide with the news.

"Our authors have an astonishingly wide range of interests, experiences and specialties, and that's reflected in what they write," says Eston Martz, creative services specialist at Minitab, who oversees the blog. "We always write with statistics or quality improvement in mind, but beneath that broad umbrella we've had posts about wedding plans, fantasy football, gas mileage, pierogies, video games and more."

Five of the most popular posts that have appeared on the Minitab Blog in the last few months illustrate the diversity of topics the authors touch on:

  • The probability of the Boston Red Sox missing this year's playoffs vs. that of Han Solo successfully navigating an asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back
  • How married couples can use 5-Why Analysis and Fishbone Diagrams to solve problems
  • Lessons you can learn about data from The Great Gatsby
  • An analysis of superhero movies made in the past few decades
  • How the U.S. government creates quarterly estimates of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

    The breadth of expertise and interests among the authors is deliberate, Martz says, and helps ensure that the blog includes statistical topics relevant for both advanced and novice Minitab users and quality improvement professionals.

    To sign up for the Minitab Blog RSS feed, visit blog.minitab.com/rss.php?blog_id=41ce27e8-906e-4260-8bd9-178236c098c4&sid=d7531f1b-242f-4a1c-b54f-f0582f1769bc