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I think this is a valid criticism of using scores to summarize a complex subject, and I agree that we can definitely do a better job on this. What's interestin

by feross 5y ago

I think this is a valid criticism of using scores to summarize a complex subject, and I agree that we can definitely do a better job on this. What's interesting is that arbitrary, unit-less scores seem to work well in products like Lighthouse [1] and SSL Labs [2] even though they're also "basically made up" metrics. I'm curious if anyone has ideas about why this may be the case. To your point about just stating things directly, we also do that too. See https://socket.dev/npm/package/left-pad/issues https://socket.dev/npm/package/left-pad/issues, for example. [1]: https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse [2]: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html

notafraudster 5y ago
SSL Labs works because letter grades, like most low granularity ordinal measures, clearly read as qualitative and approximate rather than having false precision. No one is saying things can't be in aggregate better or worse. Lighthouse is closer to nonsense, though the category and subcategory explanations at least seem transparent enough.