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>management refused because it improve any of their metrics This is what everyone in the United States asked for. You wanted data driven decision making. Do no

>management refused because it improve any of their metrics This is what everyone in the United States asked for. You wanted data driven decision making. Do not be surprised when the measure becomes the goal. Sorry if this sounds bitter, but I spent all day yesterday arguing with administration at a college that data driven decision making is only as good as the data you feed the system, and that specifically targeting metric improvement for its own sake is step one in the road to mind death.

graemep 1y ago
The case I was talking about was in the UK.
ACCount37 1y ago
We "wanted data driven decision making" because it beats vibe driven decision making. Even if data is meh.
- strken 1y ago
  Does it? How do you know?
- snapcaster 1y ago
  I would push back on that. I think often people's "vibes" are a lot closer to reality than extremely gamed metrics
  - ACCount37 1y ago
    There are people whose "vibes" are closer to reality than hard cold data. And then there are people who think their "vibes" are closer to reality than hard cold data. The second group is much, much larger. I don't trust vibes.
    - andsoitis 1y ago
      Do you trust your own intuition and judgment on at least some matters or topics where data is scarce, ambiguous, or contradictory?
      - teamonkey 1y ago
        In the absence of data yes, but intuition and judgement are just heuristics; they suffer strongly from personal biases and are not necessarily representative of reality.
        andsoitis 1y ago
        It also requires judgment and critical thinking to decide things like: a) is this data accurate b) is this data complete c) is this data relevant etc. So even the act of selecting data is subject to bias, good judgment.
        teamonkey 1y ago
        You make it sound like you’re just shifting the problem elsewhere, when this isn’t the case. It’s not wholly subjective. Some of the processes you can use to understand your data are mathematically proven. Many others are well-tested. In any case the idea is to try to minimise your biases and check whether your assumptions are valid so that you can make better, more reliable, more informed decisions. It doesn’t have to be a perfect system to be better. You might not want to, of course.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - elevaet 1y ago
    Sometimes vibes includes things we're trying to get away from like stereotyping visible groups of people.
    - lo_zamoyski 1y ago
      Interesting your mind went there.
    - snapcaster 1y ago
      You're right. Of course i'm not rejecting "data" or "analysis" entirely, what im pushing back against is the (very common) thing that happens in companies where you get into a situation of "who you going to trust? the data or your own lying eyes" kind of thing
      - elevaet 1y ago
        Yeah I agree with you. I think it's a good approach to check vibes against data and vice-versa, and not blindly trust one over the other - use one to look critically at the other. They both have defects.
- agentcoops 1y ago
  There are more divisions than just “data” vs “vibes.” After all, even in the natural sciences, the best data is useless without an explanation/hypothesis that can never just be reduced to the data. Precisely what is thrown out in the decline of reading is familiarity with the centuries of hard-won Enlightenment knowledge, especially concerning the stakes of education, which isn’t just vibes and that ought precisely drive our further data-driven insight into these questions. Second best, however, I’d take the “vibes” of a random teacher over the religion-based decision making that seems to be on the rise in the US. “Data-driven” religiously motivated educational policy is the worst of all possible worlds.
  - ACCount37 1y ago
    We don't use things like SAT because it's an ideal direct metric that captures how educated a student is perfectly, and allows for impeccable measurement of how successful the educational system is. We use it because it beats the alternative - which is either going off vibes or using even more indirect metrics to measure how successful the educational system is. If there's one school that claims it successfully teaches children to love reading, and another school that makes no such claim, but has +50 on SAT over the first school across the board? The second one is probably a better school.
    - contagiousflow 1y ago
      > If there's one school that claims it successfully teaches children to love reading, and another school that makes no such claim, but has +50 on SAT over the first school across the board? The second one is probably a better school. Or it's better at SAT prep? That's the entire point of OPs comment. Metrics become targets and then anything (that may still be incredibly important) but doe not contribute to that target gets lost.
      - ACCount37 1y ago
        "+50 on SAT across the board" requires at least being fairly good at SAT prep. "Claims it successfully teaches children to love reading" requires nothing but a willingness to make unsubstantiated claims. Both are imperfect performance indicators, but one is considerably less imperfect than the other.
- tux3 1y ago
  It depends. Not all good things are legible and easy to put into a spreadsheet. Blind data-driven decisions destroy all illegible good in this world that can't be boiled down to some number going up. And there's a lot of it.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  Vibes can be data. Take for instance the economy. All of these things like the GDP, employment figures, and so are supposed to be objective measurements. But precisely because of this they've been gamed to the point of absolute meaninglessness. Recent news regarding jobs numbers over the past 4 years emphasize this to the point of absurdity. All good numbers go up, all bad numbers go down. How's the economy doing? *shrug* By contrast poll people on their 'vibes' of the economy and you'd suddenly get some real and meaningful data that can't really be gamed beyond outright lying about the results. You'd of course have things like people wearing rose colored glasses with regards to the economy when 'their side' is in power, but that doesn't really change the validity of their opinion. And those opinions, as an aggregate, can really provide a lot of really valuable information.

graemep 1y ago

The case I was talking about was in the UK.

ACCount37 1y ago

We "wanted data driven decision making" because it beats vibe driven decision making. Even if data is meh.

strken 1y ago
Does it? How do you know?
snapcaster 1y ago
I would push back on that. I think often people's "vibes" are a lot closer to reality than extremely gamed metrics
- ACCount37 1y ago
  There are people whose "vibes" are closer to reality than hard cold data. And then there are people who think their "vibes" are closer to reality than hard cold data. The second group is much, much larger. I don't trust vibes.
  - andsoitis 1y ago
    Do you trust your own intuition and judgment on at least some matters or topics where data is scarce, ambiguous, or contradictory?
    - teamonkey 1y ago
      In the absence of data yes, but intuition and judgement are just heuristics; they suffer strongly from personal biases and are not necessarily representative of reality.
      - andsoitis 1y ago
        It also requires judgment and critical thinking to decide things like: a) is this data accurate b) is this data complete c) is this data relevant etc. So even the act of selecting data is subject to bias, good judgment.
        teamonkey 1y ago
        You make it sound like you’re just shifting the problem elsewhere, when this isn’t the case. It’s not wholly subjective. Some of the processes you can use to understand your data are mathematically proven. Many others are well-tested. In any case the idea is to try to minimise your biases and check whether your assumptions are valid so that you can make better, more reliable, more informed decisions. It doesn’t have to be a perfect system to be better. You might not want to, of course.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- elevaet 1y ago
  Sometimes vibes includes things we're trying to get away from like stereotyping visible groups of people.
  - lo_zamoyski 1y ago
    Interesting your mind went there.
  - snapcaster 1y ago
    You're right. Of course i'm not rejecting "data" or "analysis" entirely, what im pushing back against is the (very common) thing that happens in companies where you get into a situation of "who you going to trust? the data or your own lying eyes" kind of thing
    - elevaet 1y ago
      Yeah I agree with you. I think it's a good approach to check vibes against data and vice-versa, and not blindly trust one over the other - use one to look critically at the other. They both have defects.
agentcoops 1y ago
There are more divisions than just “data” vs “vibes.” After all, even in the natural sciences, the best data is useless without an explanation/hypothesis that can never just be reduced to the data. Precisely what is thrown out in the decline of reading is familiarity with the centuries of hard-won Enlightenment knowledge, especially concerning the stakes of education, which isn’t just vibes and that ought precisely drive our further data-driven insight into these questions. Second best, however, I’d take the “vibes” of a random teacher over the religion-based decision making that seems to be on the rise in the US. “Data-driven” religiously motivated educational policy is the worst of all possible worlds.
- ACCount37 1y ago
  We don't use things like SAT because it's an ideal direct metric that captures how educated a student is perfectly, and allows for impeccable measurement of how successful the educational system is. We use it because it beats the alternative - which is either going off vibes or using even more indirect metrics to measure how successful the educational system is. If there's one school that claims it successfully teaches children to love reading, and another school that makes no such claim, but has +50 on SAT over the first school across the board? The second one is probably a better school.
  - contagiousflow 1y ago
    > If there's one school that claims it successfully teaches children to love reading, and another school that makes no such claim, but has +50 on SAT over the first school across the board? The second one is probably a better school. Or it's better at SAT prep? That's the entire point of OPs comment. Metrics become targets and then anything (that may still be incredibly important) but doe not contribute to that target gets lost.
    - ACCount37 1y ago
      "+50 on SAT across the board" requires at least being fairly good at SAT prep. "Claims it successfully teaches children to love reading" requires nothing but a willingness to make unsubstantiated claims. Both are imperfect performance indicators, but one is considerably less imperfect than the other.
tux3 1y ago
It depends. Not all good things are legible and easy to put into a spreadsheet. Blind data-driven decisions destroy all illegible good in this world that can't be boiled down to some number going up. And there's a lot of it.
somenameforme 1y ago
Vibes can be data. Take for instance the economy. All of these things like the GDP, employment figures, and so are supposed to be objective measurements. But precisely because of this they've been gamed to the point of absolute meaninglessness. Recent news regarding jobs numbers over the past 4 years emphasize this to the point of absurdity. All good numbers go up, all bad numbers go down. How's the economy doing? *shrug* By contrast poll people on their 'vibes' of the economy and you'd suddenly get some real and meaningful data that can't really be gamed beyond outright lying about the results. You'd of course have things like people wearing rose colored glasses with regards to the economy when 'their side' is in power, but that doesn't really change the validity of their opinion. And those opinions, as an aggregate, can really provide a lot of really valuable information.