
Why Your Metrics Suck - metafunctor
http://hashedbits.com/why-your-metrics-suck/
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acgourley
I don't agree - usually the simple metrics are not actionable because they are
in the vein of "uniques per month" which is not something you can direct act
on.

Specific metrics (breakdown down uniques by cohort, behavior, etc) are
actionable, but end up being complex to describe and collect.

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mildweed
Because they're pseudoscience? No, wait, that's this article.

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metafunctor
LOL :) I wasn't trying to make it science-y, although now that I look at it it
sure comes off like pseudoscience. The graphs just struck me as a good way to
explain what I had in mind...

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rwolf
Multiplying some random functions together caused me to twitch, but I like the
"metric of the month". Having got to the end, I think the hand-wavium was an
okay way to relate your idea.

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jsankey
Metrics suck because they are indirect measurements, so by optimising the
metric you may not be optimising what you intend. There's no reason why a more
complex metric will necessarily be more directly aligned with a goal. This
thinking suggests that by adding more complexity your metrics become more
aligned, but it seems these patches could also take you further and further
from anything real.

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metafunctor
By a "complex" metric, I didn't mean that the metric is necessarily complex to
compute or represent. Rather, the complexity of the metric is a measure of the
breadth and complexity of the activities which have an effect on the result.

Take operating profit, for example. It's fairly straightforward to compute
(not as simple in practice as one might imagine, though), and it's just one
number. Pretty much anything going on in the company has an effect on the
bottom line, in one way or another. It's the result of complex activity.

Obviously, this was a poor choice of words. Any suggestions for a better word?

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jsankey
I see your point: your complexity relates to the system being measured rather
than the measurement. But I'm afraid I don't have a single word that could
make it clearer.

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jsm386
The argument is an interesting one--the more complex the metric, the harder it
is to act on it--but the author provides no reason for this other than his
graphs, which are representations of...nothing? Simply drawing a line to
represent his thesis doesn't mean his thesis is based on data; it just means
he knows how to graphically represent his thesis.

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foulmouthboy
Simple metrics or complex metrics won't get you anywhere unless you have the
proper context around them. Why should I care about this metric? How did this
metric get calculated? What am I supposed to do now?

