Measurement Bias Quotes

I think there is a tendency in science to measure what is measurable and to decide that what you cannot measure must be uninteresting.

Practically everybody (1) overweighs the stuff that can be numbered, because it yields to the statistical techniques they’re taught in academia, and (2) doesn’t mix in the hard-to-measure stuff that may be more important. That is a mistake I’ve tried all my life to avoid, and I have no regrets for having done that.

There was but one question he left unasked, and it vibrated between his lines: if gross miscalculations of a person's value could occur on a baseball field, before a live audience of thirty thousand, and a television audience of millions more, what did that say about the measurement of performance in other lines of work? If professional baseball players could be over- or under valued, who couldn't?

Just because something is easy to measure doesn't mean it's important.

In organizations, once you articulate how success will be measured, everybody tries to game the system so that they are measured in the best possible way.

... some important factor doesn't lose its "share of force" just because some "expert" can better measure other types of force.

The first step is to measure whatever can easily be measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.

The importance of a problem should not be judged by the number of pages devoted to it.