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The Tyranny of Metrics

Written by: Jerry Z. Muller
Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
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Publisher's Summary

How the obsession with quantifying human performance threatens our schools, medical care, businesses, and government

Today, organizations of all kinds are ruled by the belief that the path to success is quantifying human performance, publicizing the results, and dividing up the rewards based on the numbers. But in our zeal to instill the evaluation process with scientific rigor, we've gone from measuring performance to fixating on measuring itself. The result is a tyranny of metrics that threatens the quality of our lives and most important institutions. 

In this timely and powerful book, Jerry Muller uncovers the damage our obsession with metrics is causing and shows how we can begin to fix the problem. Filled with examples from education, medicine, business and finance, government, the police and military, and philanthropy and foreign aid, this brief and accessible book explains why the seemingly irresistible pressure to quantify performance distorts and distracts, whether by encouraging "gaming the stats" or "teaching to the test". That's because what can and does get measured is not always worth measuring, may not be what we really want to know, and may draw effort away from the things we care about. 

Along the way, we learn why paying for measured performance doesn't work, why surgical scorecards may increase deaths, and much more. But metrics can be good when used as a complement to - rather than a replacement for - judgment based on personal experience, and Muller also gives examples of when metrics have been beneficial. Complete with a checklist of when and how to use metrics, The Tyranny of Metrics is an essential corrective to a rarely questioned trend that increasingly affects us all.

©2018 Princeton University Press (P)2018 Tantor

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unable to finish this book, narrator is horribe

I can't listen to this robotic voice for another minute, I will have to return the book since I can't follow along for more than a minute at a time before my mind wanders away to anything and everything that might be remotely interesting. Awful...just awful.

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Interesting subject matter - horribly presented.

Wonderful thought provoking and illuminating ideas. An excellent study! The jagged cadence and continual emphasis on the wrong words, however, made the audio version almost unbearable.

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Brevity is the soul of wit

Muller not only made his point, he beat it to death with a sledgehammer. Matthew Josdal is a good narrator, though, so it was tolerable.

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