Jul

18

example of something in our Western culture when we "over-use", overly rely on numbers to give meaning to something. Clever marketing idea though. A bit like those French Phds at BNP who looked at their credit derivs spreadsheets in summer 2007 and couldn't see what is behind those numbers as reality is more complex. Humour helps for sure.

Robert Parker's 100-point wine rating system

One of the most influential and controversial features of Parker's wine criticism is his 100-point rating system, which he popularized in conjunction with his friend Victor Morgenroth. Parker designed the system to counter what he believed to be confusing or inflated ratings by other wine writers—many of whom he accused of a conflict of interest, as they often had a financial interest in the wines they rated. The scale, now widely imitated in other publications (such as Wine Spectator[23]), ranks wine on a scale from 50 to 100 points based upon the wine's color and appearance, aroma and bouquet, flavor and finish, and overall quality level or potential. Therefore, 51 rather than 100 different ratings are possible.

Zubin Al Genubi writes:

Other wine makers copy the style of wine with high points and the result is the uniform oaky California wine that all tastes the same and that one guy likes. French say Vive la difference with weather, soils allowing subtle differences in vintages, locations. Its like everyone piling into the same trade or trend in markets.

Big Al comments:

There is research on rating scales - confirmed by my own experience back in the day as a consultant - showing that raters rarely use any scale as designed, but wind up using only part of the scale. So, you have to normalize ratings in some way. Wine ratings show this in that an 88 is wine you don't want to buy - has to be 90 or over, with 92 maybe being the magic number.

Grade inflation would be another current example. Harvard:

Faculty decisively approve grading changes
Cap on A grades and shift from GPA to ‘average percentile rank’ set to go into effect fall 2027

Faculty voted by a wide margin to limit the total number of A’s in undergraduate classes, as part of a broader effort to rein in grade inflation and recenter academics at Harvard College — with proponents hailing the adoption as a principled collective effort to restore meaning to grades and address a complex issue in higher education.

Nearly 70 percent of voting faculty approved the grading cap — which would limit A grades to 20 percent of the undergraduates in any course plus an additional four students, with no limit on A-minuses — with a 458 to 201 vote, in weeklong balloting that closed late Tuesday and was tabulated and audited Wednesday. The policy will take effect in the fall of 2027.

Zubin Al Genubi observes wryly:

The Gentleman's C.

Larry R Williams comments:

Too many wine raters now if you are really into it 98 and above is the good stuff.

Nils Poertner reasons:

As long as people don't take it too seriously - it is all good.

Asindu Drileba writes:

One thing I picked up for western people is the obsession with IQ. In the Terman Study of the Gifted, over 1,000 children with high IQs were tracked since the 1920s. They were given recommendation letters to prestigious programs and backtracked through prestigious schools. But none of them ever got a Nobel prize. What is very ironic was that two kids that were "measured" for the program, but rejected from it for having "too low IQs" ended up winning a Nobel prize.

Another ironic twist was when James D Watson, a eugenics proponent ended up having a child that was intellectually "special needs". If he was under a serious eugenics regime like Nazi germany, he & his entire family would likely be euthanized. Watson still insisted after this that he was still pro-eugenics.

American Military contractor's exploited this religious dedication to numbers during the cold war by providing systems analysts complicated equations that were intentionally blowing up their budgets so they could get bigger contracts. This was harder for non-technical people to question (you would be declared stupid for not understanding the complex equations that computed how many planes we need for the cold war)

There are so metrics in finance that I don't understand. One time, I laughed a bit on seeing a video where Mr. Mark Spitznagel angrily screamed at someone, "You can't eat Sharpe ratio!"

Nils Poertner responds:

for speculation, many ppl over-use rational thinking and lack curiosity, flexiblity etc. too much rational thinking often acts as "barrier" for intuition, too. (those 2 French Phds I had in mind back in 2007, I love to make fun of the French Phds as they are not in the room).


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