A Reuter's OpEd titled "Quantifying the damage of the rush to quantify" highlights the perils of metrics -- vitally important in many cases -- misapplied. The author, David Callahan, emphasizes the propensity for misuse and for cheating that the unending quest for numbers and 'empirical data' creates. As he writes:Many things require metrics, many more can usefully adopt some metrics -- however, a great many things do not lend themselves to applied metrics. As Callahan notes, misuse can drive fudging, outright cheating and some very flawed perceptions. Warfare, particularly in the realm of tactical and operational training, performance and assessment is one place where, in US practice, 'metrics' are overly and wrongly applied. Significantly so..."The number-crunching crowd argues that stronger metrics lead to better outcomes, and certainly there are places where this is true."
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"But, as many critics have pointed out, trying to quantify everything is questionable given the subtleties of the human experience."
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