Name: The Tyranny of Metrics
ISBN: 9780691174952

The Tyranny of Metrics

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.

What Hacker News says

dpc_01234Apr 2025

Worth giving a read: The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Z. Muller.

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bheadmasterMay 2023

Exactly. I always forget its name tho.

The book "The Tyranny of Metrics" by Jerry Muller talks about this phenomenon in depth, giving many historical examples of metrics making systems worse instead of better. Very good read, I'd recommend it to anyone.

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JadeNBMay 2023

> Exactly. I always forget its name tho.

Me too! Fortunately, Google was smart enough to turn it up from "law about metrics".

> The book "The Tyranny of Metrics" by Jerry Muller talks about this phenomenon in depth, giving many historical examples of metrics making systems worse instead of better. Very good read, I'd recommend it to anyone.

Thanks! I'll have a look.

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diobDec 2022

Check out "The Tyranny of Metrics" book for why this won't work.

Weird to say it's simple.

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diobNov 2022

As with anything it depends. I'm definitely a code churn out machine (when I'm motivated at least), but I'm not going to say that's a good thing. I've seen others like me who leave a wake of tech debt, and others who don't. Who knows which one I am? People seem to like me though.

As others point out though, the moment something becomes a metric it ceases to be useful. Check out the book "The Tyranny of Metrics" for a breakdown of it.

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johntfellaOct 2022

if you have the article I'd be interested in reading it and saving to my collections. Another more updated book that covers a similar theme published in 2018 is Jerry Muller's Tyranny of Metrics.

1. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174952/th...

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