The Tyranny of Metrics: Understanding the Dangers of Quantifying Human Performance In today's world, organizations of all kinds are obsessed with quantifying human performance, publicizing the results, and dividing up the rewards based on the numbers. However, in our zeal to instill scientific rigor into evaluation, we have gone from measuring performance to fixating on measuring itself. This has led to a tyranny of metrics that threatens the quality of our lives and most important institutions. In his timely and powerful book, Jerry Muller uncovers the damage caused by this obsession and shows how we can begin to fix the problem. Filled with examples from education, medicine, business, finance, government, philanthropy, and foreign aid, the book explains why the seemingly irresistible pressure to quantify performance distorts and draws attention away from what we truly care about. What gets measured may not be what we really want to know, and may even lead to negative consequences, such as encouraging "gaming the stats" and teaching to the test. But metrics can be good when used as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, judgment based on personal experience. Muller provides a checklist of when and how to use metrics, making The Tyranny of Metrics an essential corrective to a rarely questioned trend that increasingly affects us all. He argues that we need to develop a personal paradigm for perceiving the technological process of developing modern knowledge as the basis for the survival of humanity and the survival of the unification of people in a warring state.

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