In many spheres of human endeavor, from science to business to education to economic policy, good decisions depend on good measurement.
In order to learn how to do something well, you have to fail sometimes. In order to fail, there has to be a measurement system. And that's the problem with most philanthropy - there's no measurement system. You give somebody some money to do something and most of the time you can really never measure whether you failed or succeeded in your judgment of that person or his ideas or their implementation.
I think the bottom line is wins and losses. That is probably the most important stat to look at.
I know a little bit about handicapping. If the horse has an IV, you want to stay - away from it.
How does one measure the success of a museum?
My role is to make sure we're moving in the right direction, getting points, rebounds, steals, assists and providing leadership.
It is much more difficult to measure nonperformance than performance.
It's easy to measure success by the number of dollars spent or by the number of programs initiated, without having too much regard for what was bought and how useful it was to the people who need it - the war fighter and the analyst.
Everybody that has a measurement, whether it's in teaching or whether it's in your job, you're always worried how you will be measured.
Past performance speaks a tremendous amount about one's ability and likelihood for success.
Everybody's got the mindset that everything should be measurable.
If I'm selecting a group, the first thing I look for is a record of achievement . . . If (candidates achieve) in small things, there's a very good chance they'll perform well in big things.
I think the main thing you measure your success by is what you do in comparison to your opposition. If you're in an industry where you're the leader, then you're performing very well.
Progress is measured by milestones. What many good people lack are markers that might tell them how they are actually doing. Goals can become a ritual or a fetish, but in the right measure they can give us some much needed reference points. No wonder some seem discouraged! Minus such milestones, we often feel minus in our lives
