29 Hamming, Learning to Learn: You Get What You Measure, 1 June 1995
Channel: Hamming on Hamming: Learning to Learn
Date: 2018-03-03

You may think that the title means if you measure accurately you will get an accurate measurement, and if not then not; it refers to a much more subtle thing - the way you choose to measure things controls to a large extent what happens. I repeat the story Eddington told about the fisherman who went fishing with a net. They examined the size of the fish they caught and concluded there was a minimum size to the fish in the sea. The instrument you use clearly affects what you see.

00:00 Introduction: You get what you measure
04:11 The things you chose to measure
09:34 Distributions
13:48 A group rating themselves always rates themselves high
17:26 The relative judgement is one of the best methods
21:13 A great problem; who you first attract
24:04 Self selection
30:45 How does promotion actually work?
33:25 Human judgements may not be desirable
38:56 Earthquakes
42:15 If the whole organization is bent one way you’d have trouble finding it out.
48:18 End

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