I spotted an interesting book in my local library recently:  The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada [1].  I thought to myself, our government spent considerable resources on this commission.  I should at least browse through the final report.  I flipped through the first few pages.  I found a note saying that the contents are public domain.  In this blog, I reproduce some of the contents of the report to create a setting for my discussion on operational data. …

I recall somebody mentioning that the former definition for insanity is doing an action repeatedly while expecting different results.  Among the interests that I have in organizations is how at times many organizations make the same mistakes; or how sometimes the same mistake might be made by a particular organization repetitively.  So it is fascinating indeed when an airline facing an ice storm encounters much the same complaints from customers after a similar storm the previous year.  I…

In recent blogs, I have been distinguishing between quantitative data and narrative data. I believe that I separated the two forms relatively well. Although I originally focused on the differences in data in order to give narrative "its own space," actually there can be a symbiotic relationship between the two types of data. In my last blog, I said that quantitative data can be incorporated into narrative data. In my submission today, I will be discussing how the narrative can be used to…

I recently noticed a proliferation of websites from organizations in my area openly offering to investigate ghosts. I thought it would be interesting to share my peculiar data-oriented slant on the subject. It is possible to approach the issue of ghosts from different perspectives. I have been taught to accept the…

When I returned to university to do a graduate degree, I was interested to discover how certain terms are subject to "intellectual interpretation." A word that I was asked to explain during one of my earliest classes was "ontology." Since this term was absent from my dictionary, I originally confused it with "oncology." I faintly recall that oncology involves the study of tumors. After consulting a few sources, I said that ontology is the study of how things come to exist or into being. I…