Category: data science
Goodhart’s Law: When the metric becomes the target
This is a very common trap that decision-makers fall into. Find out how. I will begin with two analogies: “Nail production” and the “cobra effect”. The famous “nail production” analogy A company announced to its employees that they were going to assess their productivity by the number of nails manufactured. The result was a large number of useless small nails; then, the managers came up with a different metric: the weight of nails manufactured. The result was few but heavy, again useless nails”. This story itself could be a manufactured one; but, it is a good introduction to the concept….