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Christoph Maier, Ph.D.
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Mathematics Department |
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“Students have a huge advantage when applying for internships and jobs in industry and government. Being introduced to the ASTM process of producing clearly written standards and understanding how standards are structured and used are important to many industries and yet are not covered in most universities.” |
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At what university and in what department do you teach? |
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I teach in the mathematics department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. |
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What is the nature of the courses you teach? |
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I teach statistics courses – mostly introductory classes for non-majors. |
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What year did you join ASTM International? In which committees are you active? Are you a committee officer? |
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I joined ASTM while working for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals during the mid-1990s, and I have been active in Committee E11 on Quality and Statistics. I have been chair of the task groups that have revised standards E 122, Practice for Calculating Sample Size to Estimate, With a Specified Tolerable Error, the Average for Characteristic of a Lot or Process, and E 178, Practice for Dealing With Outlying Observations.
Since 2003, I have been chair of Subcommittee E11.85 on Support and Interpretation. E11.85 answers technical questions about the standards.
I supervised two graduate students from IUP who were doing internships with E11. One of their big responsibilities was to carefully review some E11 standards to locate typographical errors, which had crept into the standards when ASTM changed the word processing software used to store and print standards.
Because most ASTM members (volunteers!) are very busy with their livelihood, having interns help in the development of new standards can speed up the process of developing new standards. One intern, Christy, helped with the conversion of the old U.S. Department of Defense standard H108 to ASTM form and style. H108 contains myriad tables that had to be converted to ASTM format. Christy undertook this monumental undertaking with amazing proficiency. Our last intern, Luis, worked on standard E 178-02, Practice for Dealing with Outlying Observations, which was due for revisions. Luis generated graphs to help the readers see the distribution of data values in each of the examples in the standard. His suggested changes were reviewed at the March meeting of E11. Clearly, interns can play a vital role in ASTM. |
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What are some advantages of your participation in standards development? |
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The biggest advantage for me has probably been the opportunity to work on standards with statisticians who have a wealth of experience using statistics in real-world applications. I have learned a lot from them and from the discussions about standards at semiannual meetings. |
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Do you incorporate standards, ASTM or otherwise, into your curriculum? If so, what types? How are they implemented (case studies, research, other)? What is the value of doing so? |
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I have not yet incorporated standards in my teaching, but I am intending to do so. There are a number of great ASTM standard methods to test materials properties, which students see on a daily basis. Some of these procedures can easily be carried out in an introductory statistics class. One example is D 4918, Test Method for Coefficient of Static Friction of Uncoated Writing and Printing Paper by Use of the Inclined Plane Method. The inclined plane is easy to build and the procedure is straightforward so that students can follow the test method to run the procedure. That process will allow me to talk about the use of standards to manufacture high-quality products, how standards are used in industry, and the format of ASTM standards. It will also provide a great way of introducing important ASTM concepts such as repeatability and reproducibility. |
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Have you worked in industry, either past or currently? If so, in what capacity? What role did standards play in this experience? |
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I worked for nine years as a statistician in the Quality Division at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. We did not use the standards in our group, except standards for rounding and outliers, although we used many statistical techniques that are discussed in the E11 standards. I used these standards for reference. |
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What advantages do you see for students to have an understanding of standards and their development? |
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I see four important advantages:
1) Students become aware that most of the manufactured items around them were manufactured using standards to ensure uniformity and quality.
2) Students are introduced to the idea of intellectual property.
3) Students are introduced to the process of achieving quality in documents through a process of consensus. In particular, every negative vote must be addressed, regardless of who submitted the negative vote and the requirement that the person who submits a negative vote must suggest alternate language.
4) Students have a huge advantage when applying for internships and jobs in industry and government. Being introduced to the ASTM process of producing clearly written standards and understanding how standards are structured and used are important to many industries and yet are not covered in most universities. |
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In your view, should a familiarity with standards be required for graduate-level education, particularly in engineering, law and business disciplines? Would this assist in gaining professional success? |
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Yes, a familiarity with standards should be required for graduate-level education in engineering, law and business. In the sciences as well, a familiarity is very important. It would definitely assist the student since he/she would have familiarity with standards and the process for creating them, which are very important skills in industry.
2007 |
