How To Measure Anything

This book by Douglas W. Hubbard isn’t exactly a critical thinking textbook. But it is a good text about measurements, probabilities, and evaluation. Imagine that you have a goal. You create a plan how to reach this goal, but how can you be sure that the goal is reached? You can make your goal measurable, then you can measure it and compare real results with expected results. And according to the author it can be any goal because you can measure anything. Sounds good, isn’t it?

It is actually one of the problems related to decision-making and goal defining, how to make goals realistic and how to understand that you have reached the goal you need. And if you have wrong definition of your goal you can make wrong decisions.

The author can tell you many interesting things about measurements. For example, many people have a counter-productive concept of measurement, thinking that they need to meet some unachievable standards of certainty to measure something. But the author has another, more productive definition of measurement: it is a quantitatively expressed reduction of uncertainty based on one or more observations. He explains how measurements are used in different sciences and how people can measure phenomena in their everyday life.

The author also tells about a concept of calibration. You may have heard that people tend to overestimate their confidence. It may be good to think they are experts, but it can turn bad as soon as they need to make real decisions. The calibration can help you to make estimations and evaluations closer to reality and to correct your over- and under-confidence. As a result your measurements and your decision would become better.

You can find a number of topics in the book related to measurements and decision-making: how to measure the value of information, how to make samples, how to measure risks, how to estimate errors of measurements. I believe this book has some topics that critical thinking textbooks may not have, so I recommend to read it in addition to any courses or book on critical thinking.