“ The Likert scale. Respondents are asked to choose where they fall on a range of possible feelings about a thing, generally in the form of strongly dislike, dislike, strongly like, strongly disagree, a… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ • If it’s really that important, it’s something you can define. If it’s something you think exists at all, it’s something you’ve already observed somehow. • If it’s something important and something u… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ For all practical decision-making purposes, we need to treat measurement as observations that quantitatively reduce uncertainty. A mere reduction, not necessarily elimination, of uncertainty will suff… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ A cybersecurity expert can become well versed in technical details such as conducting penetration tests, using encryption tools, setting up firewalls, and much more—and still be unable to realisticall… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ Two good indicators of revealed preferences are things the people tend to value a lot: time and money. If you look at how they spend their time and how they spend their money, you can infer quite a lo… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ Very few experts actually measure their performance over time, and they tend to summarize their memories with anecdotes. They are right sometimes and wrong sometimes, but the anecdotes they remember t… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ Understanding how to measure uncertainty is key to measuring risk. Understanding risk in a quantitative sense is key to understanding how to compute the value of information. Understanding the value o… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ We know that decision makers will experience an increase in confidence in their decisions even when the analysis or information-gathering methods are found to be ineffectual. This is part of what Dawe… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ Knowing something about the monetary value and cost of the information in a measurement puts a new light on what is measurable. If someone says a measurement would be too expensive, we have to ask, Co… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ Modeling the world mathematically is as uniquely a human trait as language or art, but you would rarely find anyone complaining of being reduced to a poem or reduced to a painting. Douglas W. Hubbard
“ Given a particular observation, it may seem more obvious to frame a measurement by asking the question, What can I conclude from this observation? or, in probabilistic terms, What is the probability X… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ The most important questions of life are indeed, for the most part, really only problems of probability. —Pierre Simon Laplace, Théorie Analytique des Probabilités, 1812 Douglas W. Hubbard
“ Researchers have run experiments25 showing that experts can be trained to be better at estimating probabilities by applying a battery of estimation tests, giving the experts a lot of quick, repetitive… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ It seems that to have a truly profound revelation, you almost always have to look at something other than what you have been looking at in the past. Being able to compute the value of information has… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ It is not too bold a statement to say that a software development project is one of the riskiest investments a business makes. For example, the chance of a large software project being canceled increa… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ Consider these statistics. It used to cost Farm Journal, a client of Key Survey, an average of $4 to $5 per respondent for a 40- to 50-question survey of farmers. Now, using Key Survey, it costs Farm… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ Why do we care about measurements at all? There are just three reasons. The first reason—and the focus of this book—is that we should care about a measurement because it informs key decisions. Second,… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ When presented new information, we have no other option than to relate it to what we already know—there is no blank space in our minds within which new information can be stored so as not to contamina… Douglas W. Hubbard
“ The objection to using stats boils down to nothing more than an irrational fear of numbers causing some to believe math somehow detracts from understanding or appreciation Douglas W. Hubbard
“ What they really mean is that numbers can be used to confuse people, especially the gullible ones lacking basic skills with numbers. With this, I completely agree, Douglas W. Hubbard
