{"id":58,"date":"2015-12-07T10:39:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T10:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onionsauce.com\/mole_end\/index.php\/2015\/12\/07\/turtles-questions-and-fleas\/"},"modified":"2015-12-07T10:39:00","modified_gmt":"2015-12-07T10:39:00","slug":"turtles-questions-and-fleas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onionsauce.com\/mole_end\/index.php\/2015\/12\/07\/turtles-questions-and-fleas\/","title":{"rendered":"Turtles, questions, and fleas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Metrics are used to answer questions, and questions are like fleas:<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, naturalists observe, a flea<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Has smaller fleas that on him prey;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">And these have smaller still to bite &#8217;em,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so proceed ad infinitum.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">(Jonathan Swift, On Poetry:\u00a0 A Rhapsody, 1733)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">So a change in a single metric should be assessed both in the context of other metrics that address the same question, but also in the context of other peer subquestions that address a wider issue.\u00a0 If the wider focus is not maintained, well, &#8220;&#8230; one little old metric goes down, and everyone loses their minds!&#8221;.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here&#8217;s an excellent example from one of my favorite financial markets commentators. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.capitalspectator.com\/dont-confuse-manufacturing-with-the-broad-macro-trend\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">http:\/\/www.capitalspectator.com\/dont-confuse-manufacturing-with-the-broad-macro-trend\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Metrics are used to answer questions, and questions are like fleas: \u00a0 So, naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite &#8217;em, And so proceed ad infinitum. \u00a0 (Jonathan Swift, On Poetry:\u00a0 A Rhapsody, 1733) \u00a0 So a change in a single metric should be&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/onionsauce.com\/mole_end\/index.php\/2015\/12\/07\/turtles-questions-and-fleas\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Turtles, questions, and fleas<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-perils-of-metrics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onionsauce.com\/mole_end\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onionsauce.com\/mole_end\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onionsauce.com\/mole_end\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onionsauce.com\/mole_end\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onionsauce.com\/mole_end\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onionsauce.com\/mole_end\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onionsauce.com\/mole_end\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onionsauce.com\/mole_end\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onionsauce.com\/mole_end\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}