Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
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.
Thanks, that’s a good one. One day a few years ago as we sat around before class began one of my instructors joined in on a conversation a few of us were having about the GRE. He said that he felt like most members of admissions committees used GRE scores to satisfy their consciences that they had chosen and disqualified the correct people despite the fact that plenty of studies had concluded that higher GRE scores were poor indicators of ultimate success in graduate programs. As GRE scores below a certain point were decent indicators of ultimate failure in graduate programs, he had while head of the department suggested pooling all applicants whom scored above that point (and whom had surpassed a couple of other such indicators) and randomly selecting among them for admission. The suggestion didn’t go through, as one might imagine. But I’ve always liked it as an illustration of how many of us not only can’t deal with randomness but also can’t admit we ourselves act arbitrarily.