W Edwards Deming was an American statistician and management guru who used physical demonstrations to illuminate his teachings. In one demonstration Deming repeatedly dropped marbles through a funnel at a target, marking where they landed, and observing the resulting pattern. He applied a sequence of "rules" to try to improve performance. In each case the experiment begins with the funnel positioned directly over the target.

 Rule 1: The funnel remains directly above the target.
 Rule 2: Adjust the funnel position by shifting the target to compensate after each drop. E.g. If the last drop missed 1 cm east, move the funnel 1 cm to the west of its current position.
 Rule 3: As rule 2, but first move the funnel back over the target, before making the adjustment. E.g. If the funnel is 2 cm north, and the marble lands 3 cm north, move the funnel 3 cm south of the target.
 Rule 4: The funnel is moved directly over the last place a marble landed.
Apply the four rules to the set of 50 pseudorandom displacements provided (e.g in the Racket solution) for the dxs and dys. Output: calculate the mean and standard-deviations of the resulting x and y values for each rule.

Note that rules 2, 3, and 4 give successively worse results. Trying to deterministically compensate for a random process is counter-productive, but -- according to Deming -- quite a popular pastime: see the Further Information, below for examples.

Stretch goal 1: Generate fresh pseudorandom data. The radial displacement of the drop from the funnel position is given by a Gaussian distribution (standard deviation is 1.0) and the angle of displacement is uniformly distributed.

Stretch goal 2: Show scatter plots of all four results.



Further information

 Further explanation and interpretation
 Video demonstration of the funnel experiment at the Mayo Clinic.
 
RadiusDistribution = NormalDistribution[0, 1];
AngleDistribution = UniformDistribution[{0, Pi}];
 
(*Mathematica has built in transformation functions, but this seems clearer given the way the instructions were written.*)
ToCartesian[{r_, a_}] := ToCartesian[{Abs@r, a - Pi}] /; Negative[r];
ToCartesian[{r_, a_}] := FromPolarCoordinates[{r, a}];
 
newData = 
  ToCartesian /@ 
   Transpose[{RandomVariate[RadiusDistribution, 100], 
     RandomVariate[AngleDistribution, 100]}];
 
TableForm[Results[#, newData] & /@ Range[4], TableSpacing -> 5]
 