When Good Measurement Goes Bad
iTunes Conspiracy
OK, maybe I titled this a little dramatically, but it will be fun to see who finds this post in their rant-research! I work from my home office and listen to my iPod all day…it sort of blends into the background noice. Heck, even when I DO go to the office, I play my iPod [...]
Mercator Projection
I used to have a professor who ranted (seemingly at random moments in a lecture) that “the map is NOT the territory, people!” At the time I didn’t care too much what the heck he meant because those inane ramblings never showed up on final exams. Many years later however, I find that this is [...]
Incenting Weight Loss
In the continuing category of When Good Measurement Goes Bad, today’s question is about Whole Foods. These nice folks, who are (in my humble opinion) the quintessential yuppie expression of enlightenment, have recently decided employees can get an even better employee discount if they are healthier, specifically if they have lower cholesterol, don’t smoke and [...]
Decimate the competition
Where measurement and etymology meet. Getting some refresher info on mutually exclusive random sampling, I came across a definition of “decimate”. Decimation (Latin: decimatio; decem = “ten”) was a form of military discipline used by officers in the Roman Army to punish mutinous or cowardly soldiers. The word decimation is derived from Latin meaning “removal [...]