Category: Science

“Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes. It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” – W. Edwards Demming

When I was a baby engineer, the VP of Engineering where I worked decided to measure build breaks as a proxy for quality. He was so excited by this, he then went wild with power and decreed that no developer can break the build more than once per quarter. So much quality, right?

You can guess what happened next – no developer committed to the code base more than once every four months, those changes were huge, and tracking down where the build was broken took months.

This is an example of Goodhart’s Law:

“Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.”

Charles Goodhart

As soon as you start using metrics to manage people, those people will change their behaviour to game those metrics. It’s better to use measurements as a temperature check to examine your Engineering system then zooming into areas that aren’t working using qualitative techniques (a fancy way of saying TALK TO YOUR ENGINEERS).

What metrics are best?

In Working Backwards, Colin Bryar and Bill Carr at Amazon describe two types of measures: Output and Input metrics.

  • Output metrics: Measure how successful a process or activity is.
  • Input metrics: The activities that lead to changes in output metrics,

Most of us concentrate on output metrics, for example looking at defect rates, but forget that there is little we can do to directly improve that measure. To drive down defect rates, we might think about how much testing is automated and how often those tests run – this is your input metric.

Choose output metrics that align with the value you want to give to your customers and choose input metrics that you think will improve those. Always start with customer value.

Measure multiple dimensions

Don’t be like the VP – balance your metrics across multiple dimensions. Nicole Forsgren describes five dimensions for highly effective engineering teams:

  • Satisfaction and Wellbeing
  • Performance
  • Activity
  • Communication and Collaboration
  • Efficiency and Flow

You want your metrics to balance across two or three of these to avoid forcing your teams into strange behaviours.

Another example, if you’re measuring number of commits (activity) only, then it’s going to be really easy for teams to stop helping each other while trying to optimise getting code into mainline.

Balance is the key.

Being data-driven is really fashionable, especially as business push to do more with fewer people. Being only data-driven is not enough, remember your teams are people, remember your teams need to collaborate. In the end, engineering is a human endeavor.

The Geek shall Inherit

In the UK only one of the six-hundred and fifty Members of Parliament has a scientific background. Homeopathy and chiropractic are available on the NHS, while effective and proven medicines are shunned. Our newspapers and television constantly report non-effective and dangerous practices as if they were fact. Even when they report on scientific work, scientists are misrepresented and used to score political points which leaves the public believing that there is no use in funding research any more. The UK is turning from a centre of excellence, a candle in the darkness, to a Thunderdome where ever-decreasing funds are fought for by our scientific community.

Enough, says Mark Henderson – the head of communications at the Wellcome Trust, and sets forward a manifesto to reclaim our culture of scientific inquiry and build a government where decisions are made based on evidence rather than fear, uncertainty and doubt.

In order to try to force our MPs to listen, Dave Watts pledged to send a copy of The Geek Manifesto to all MPs if enough volunteers stepped up to share the load and, oh boy, did they? Not only that, Transworld Publishers donated 150 copies to make sure the pledge could be met.

My own copy is now on its way to Julian Huppert (MP for Cambridge), who certainly doesn’t need it but our own MP, Andrew Lansley, was the first to be snapped up. No surprise there. Let’s hope they read and act on it so the country doesn’t fall back into the dark ages.

The Illusion of Dolphin Sex

You’re probably familiar with the Young Girl-Old Woman illusion, which was first seen on a German postcard in 1888. Or a the Necker Cube, where the image’s perspective spontaneously changes.

Take a look at the USA Network logo:

If you don’t see a dolphin performing oral sex on a smurf then you need to contact a mental health professional.

Radio Binoculars

Radio Binoculars

Radio Binoculars,
originally uploaded by Damien Ryan.

On the right is the original 76m Lovell Telescope, built in 1957, and has been responsible for keeping the UK at the forefront of space science.

On the left is the smaller (but closer) 25m Mk II telescope which forms part of the e-MERLIN network – a half dozen radio telescopes (including Cambridge’s own Mullard Telescope) connected via fibre optic cable that is sensitive enough to read a number plate on the moon.

Science is cool and so is the Jodrell Bank Visitor Centre; go while it’s still around.

What’s up Doc?

Astronomers have discovered a star that’s made from diamond. The 10 billion trillion trillion carat beast has been found in Centarus and makes the Star of Africa, the world’s biggest diamond, look like something from Elizabeth Duke in comparison.

I wonder if this is why the great Centauri Republic were so rich?

Stacklady’s Morphic Resonator

I almost changed the world todayMetafilter has an interesting thread on MetaFilter discussing Rupert Sheldrake – a biologist turned either New Age advocate or snake oil salesman depending on who you believe.

His theories of Morphic Resonance and The Extended Mind seem nice on a gut level but unfortunately none of his experiments have been confirmed by anyone else.