SEDL / STP / STP207-EB / STP39281S

Committee D-19: The First Quarter Century

Adams, RC
Superintendent, Chemical Engineering Laboratory, U. S. Naval Engineering Experiment Station, Annapolis, Md.

Pages: 6    Published: Jan 1957

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Abstract

The word “committee” is unhappy; it tends to have unfavorable connotations. For instance, a whimsical definition of committee is: “A group of persons who individually can do nothing and collectively agree that nothing can be done.”Recognizing this stigma, or perhaps contributing to it, was the report of an extensive study published by a research institution soon after World War II. By statistical means this purportedly scholarly investigation reached the dismaying conclusion that the optimum size for a committee was 0.7 member.