When a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure, because effort flows to the proxy rather than the thing. Earnings per share, same-store sales and user counts all decay this way once compensation is attached. The defence is to read any metric alongside the incentive that produced it.
Why large state plans fail when they override local, practical knowledge.
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Incentives and data applied to cheating teachers, sumo wrestlers and other puzzles.
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How firms are organised, using agency, contracts and transaction-cost economics.
Cathy O'Neil catalogues algorithmic systems deployed in hiring, lending, policing, and education that reinforce rather than correct existing inequities. The book's value is empirical: these are real systems with documented effects, not speculative risks.
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How fixation on measured performance damages the work it is meant to improve.