OT: The Tyranny of Metrics

A new book in which the author points out that society's increasing use of metrics to evaluate performance has consequences for the very behavior being measured; consequences that are sometimes good and sometimes bad.

As an example, the "performance" of surgeons is increasingly measured by metrics that count surgical success (avoiding death or negative outcomes). The result? Studies reveal that, increasingly, surgeons decline to offer surgery to patients with complex conditions and questionable outcomes, resulting in deaths because their conditions, while requiring surgery, involve outcomes that are not "safe" enough from the perspective of surgeons engaged in "risk avoidance" because they are now being measured by metrics.

The author says he is not against the use of metrics; he is only against the overuse of metrics; against metrics not being a tool for judgment, but rather metrics being a complete replacement for judgment (judgment based upon experience).

It got me to wondering: Has the increased reliance upon metrics in sports had unintended, unforeseen, negative impacts that has changed how baseball (or other sports) is played?

The Tyranny of Metrics

Forums: 
DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.

Comments

Please join The Key Players Club to read or post comments.

This is my school
This is home

Please join The Key Players Club to read or post comments.

This is my school
This is home

Please join The Key Players Club to read or post comments.

This is my school
This is home

Please join The Key Players Club to read or post comments.

"Nope, launch him into the sun and fart on him on the way up"
-gobble gobble chumps

"11-0, bro"
-Hunter Carpenter (probably)

Please join The Key Players Club to read or post comments.

Wet stuff on the red stuff.

Join us in the Key Players Club

Please join The Key Players Club to read or post comments.

Wet stuff on the red stuff.

Join us in the Key Players Club

Please join The Key Players Club to read or post comments.

"Why gobble gobble chumps asks such good questions, I will never know." - TheFifthFuller

Please join The Key Players Club to read or post comments.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Jet Sweep

Please join The Key Players Club to read or post comments.

Never Forget #1 Overall Seed UVA 54, #64 UMBC 74

Please join The Key Players Club to read or post comments.

"Why gobble gobble chumps asks such good questions, I will never know." - TheFifthFuller

Please join The Key Players Club to read or post comments.

I seldom speak to loluva grads, but when I do, I tell them I want large fries.