I think the problem is that we don't seem to have hypothesis' that guide our interpretation of the numbers. In the absence of a guiding framework on how to int

I think the problem is that we don't seem to have hypothesis' that guide our interpretation of the numbers. In the absence of a guiding framework on how to interpret your data, you're bound to min-max individual criteria; we'll never know if we're just in a local maxima, however. I'm not saying this is an easy problem, mind you. It's easy to wax poetic about having your culture guide decisions when you can point at a graph and say "yep, we're making $xx,000 less per hour".