The HBS hosts take a look at the pros and cons of several metrics by which we are rated and ranked. We talk about grading, student evaluations, the Philosophical Gourmet Report (ranking professional Philosophy programs), social media algorithms, China’s social credit systems, and others. We also delve into some of Cathy O’Neal’s arguments in *Weapons of Math Destruction.* 

Today’s episode takes a look at many of the ways that metrics work in our day to day lives. Leigh, Ammon, and Shannon take on the various ways we are all dominated by rankings and ratings. Are there better and worse ways to rank and rate ourselves and others? What are we doing when we grade our students? Is it really a fair assessment of their achievements or deeply biased and problematic? What are we doing when we evaluate each other in the academy and when our institutions evaluate our performance as scholars, teachers, and researchers? Is there a way to rank programs objectively or does the very act of ranking produce the results it claims to merely discover? Finally, given that we are being rated and ranked by hidden algorithmic metrics all the time, is it better to have social ranking systems centralized in a government or spread out across the private sector?

For further reading, check out the links below:

• To learn more about Leigh’s experiment in grade (re)distribution see the three-part installment here, here, and here on her website: ReadMoreWriteMoreThinkMoreBeMore.com.
• To examine the developments in “ungrading,” see Jesse Stommel’s FAQ page.
• To read about the dispiriting exercise of quantifying academic job performance read: And then everything turned to beige… The quantified academic in an age of academic precarity, by Paul Prinsloo.
• For a discussion of how metrics work more to punish and distort than to aid and clarify, read Jerry Z. Muller’s, The Tyranny of Metrics. John Danaher offers a nice summary of the Muller’s main points and how they impact the academic in: Measuring What Matters: On the Tyranny of Academic Metrics.
• How does Netflix know that I will actually like Iron Fist? The Secret Behind Netflix’s Mysterious Ratings System, by Yoni Heisler.
• Be sure to watch Black Mirror’s Nosedive on the question of social ranking on Netflix, and listen to Leigh and Danaher discuss it on the Black Mirror Reflections Podcast. 
• For more on China’s social credit system, check out: The Complicated Truth about China’s Social Credit System, by Nicole Kobie.
• For the critique of black box algorithms and the need for data transparency watch the TED talk by Cathy O’Neil, The, author of Weapons of Math Destruction.