The Pankian Metaphor 3047

the post

was trying to actually focus on the evaluation methodology as opposed to specifics ... which I hopefully explained better in the subsequent post

along with its reference to: A Comparison of Tax Distribution Tables: How Missing or Incomplete Information Distorts Perspectives:

my original post in the series

started off citing the comptroller general's talk (carried on cspan)

besides observing several times that none of the responsible enbreasties for at least the past 50 years seem capable of doing simple math operations, another observation (in the talk) is the total lack of valid metrics regarding whether programs are meeting objectives at all (i.e. which programs can be considered succesful and which program aren't succesful ... based on something else than how much total money is involved).

this has some resonance for me because of heavy involvement as an undergraduate doing dynamic adaptive resource management algorrithms, which required extensive instrumentation and evaluation (i.e. whether the results corresponded with predictions in any way)

an early experience in university datacenter metrics and accountability was the switch-over of the univ. datacenter to a quasi profit center. that datacenter had been operating under flat budget from the state legislature. it was then supposed to provide services to the whole univ. (both education and administrative). The result was lots of individuals and groups constantly badgering the datacenter for special consideration with enormous amounts of politics. The datacenter management was constantly being called on to make value judgement calls about the relative merits of the special interests. The change over was the univ. datacenter went to the state legislature and got a change in status to be pay-as-you-go profit center. The datacenter got to provide services and were paid for those services. If some special interest group wanted special consideration ... it was no longer arm twisting datacenter management ... they had to got to the state legislature for additional funding to pay for the services. The state legislature could put all pending funding consideration requests on a consistent level playing field (and it was no longer necessary for the datacenter management to make those value judgements, especially when lacking sufficient overall information to accurately prioritise the demands).

Part of the problem is allowing special interest considerations to permeate all aspects of the infrastructure ... is you don't know 1) if it is effective (where are the metrics and standards) and 2) individual operations may not have sufficient information to make a valid value judgement. For instance, the $300 car ... how does anybody know if it is being registered by somebody really in need of buttistance or not. Additionally, if it is truely a needy person that requires it for commuting ... then the metric might be both the level of need and the commute requirement.

circa 1994, the census department published some study that included statement that half of all manufactoring jobs in the US are subsidized ... aka half of all manufacturing employees were getting more benefits than the value they provided. i then did simple analysis that showed if the trend continued, in 25 years, 97precent of the jobs would be subsidized (i.e. only three percent of the people would be providing more benefit than the value they received). previous posts on the