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Metrics

I'm proctoring an exam as I type this. It is my 35th year of full-time teaching so I've done a bunch of exams. The first exam turned in is rarely the best; often it is incomplete, turned in out of frustration by a student stymied by the questions.

Time of completion is not the best metric in this circumstance. It is an easy metric (some instructors put the time completed on each exam as it is turned in) but it measures a quality different from the goals of the classes I have taught.

I often run into metrics that people use more for their convenience than for their usefulness. Early mapping software used distance traveled to optimize routes. Nowadays knowledge of speed limits is used to make travel time the metric instead of travel distance.

In politics one of the scandals of the day is the way folk associate Trump and his ilk with organized religion, given his failure to attend worship services, public breaking of most spiritual laws, and general air of contempt and anger toward his fellow humans. What metric are they using? Is it his selling of a Bible to raise money for his legal bills? Is it the way he regularly accuses others of being anti-religion without ever discussing his own behavior? 

Throughout my life, including that blessed period before I ever heard Trump's name, I have adapted the New Testament metric of judging a vine by the fruit that it bears. Biden spends his time trying to help poor folk (forgiving the federal components of student debt, trying to improve health care for all) while Trump put children in cages. My metric is pretty easy to apply these days.

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