Make Your Point: GOODHART'S LAW

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pronounce GOODHART'S LAW:

GOOD hartz LAW

connect this word to others:

While we're talking about Goodhart's law, see if you can define these:

1. Murphy's law is the idea that if anything can go wrong...

2. Parkinson's law is the idea that tasks will always...

If you're not sure, give them a click.

definition:

In 1975, the economist Charles Goodhart wrote: "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes." People often paraphrase his idea like this: "When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric."

Goodhart probably wasn't the first person to figure this out, but he did publicize it in the right place at the right time. The idea has since become known as "Goodhart's law."

So, the phrase "Goodhart's law" helps you quickly express the idea that when you focus too much on some particular outcome or statistic, people start to manipulate it, so it stops measuring what it was supposed to measure.

grammatical bits:

Part of speech:

Proper noun: "They forgot about Goodhart's law."

Other forms:

If you prefer, use an uppercase L: "Goodhart's Law."

how to use it:

Since it's rare, you'll probably want to gloss it for your readers (define it as you use it), like in both examples below.

You might talk about situations where Goodhart's law applies, or situations ruled by Goodhart's law. Or, talk about people or situations that obey, disobey, follow, flout, apply, account for, or forget about Goodhart's law.

examples:

"Goodhart's law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. In other words, if you pick a measure to assess performance, people find a way to game it. To illustrate, I like the (probably apocryphal) story of a nail factory that sets 'Number of nails produced' as their measure of productivity and the workers figure out they can make tons of tiny nails to hit the target easily."
— Jono Hey, Sketchplanations, 11 November 2017

"Students do all sorts of things to make themselves look attractive to admissions officers. Some people with athletic talents spend more time on high school sports than they otherwise would have. Others, for the same reason, become mathletes or model-U.N. participants. A version of Goodhart's Law — when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure — applies here. Once it's known that colleges take something to be an indicator of a property they value, that property is likely to be less closely correlated with that indicator."
— Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York Times, 16 November 2024

has this page helped you understand "Goodhart's law"?

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Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this term, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

study it:

Explain the meaning of "Goodhart's law" without saying "metrics fail because people game them" or "statistics quit being useful because people manipulate them."

try it out:

(Source)

On Reddit, in response to an annoyed Lowe's customer who posted the image above, another user commented that Goodhart's law was in play. "A metric can be either a target or an accurate measurement, but not both," they wrote.

Imagine that you're taking over as the delivery manager at this Lowe's. Keeping Goodhart's law in mind, talk about what you would do differently to get accurate feedback from customers.

before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game for this month is "Spot the Sharper Image."

Which of the two items described below is a real one that you can order from the Sharper Image catalog, and which one did I invent? Scroll to the bottom to see which one is real!

Try this set today:

Item A: Bacon Express Toaster. "Make up to 6 strips of regular cut bacon in minutes."

Item B: Remote Control Finding Glasses. "Instantly detects rectangular prisms, even those with irregular edges."

review this word:

1. The near opposite of Goodhart's law would be the idea that you can

A. make heads or tails of something: understand it despite complexity.
B. fatten a pig by weighing it: improve an outcome just by measuring it.
C. see the forest for the trees: be aware of both the main idea and the details.

2. In the New York Times, Eduardo Porter discusses Goodhart's law, noting "_____."

A. Bureaucrats — no surprise — cheated
B. Anxiety is widespread across the American economy
C. The total population of unauthorized immigrants in the United States has declined. California felt it first

a final word:

I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.

I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.

From my blog:
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From my heart: a profound thanks to the generous patrons, donors, and sponsors that make it possible for me to write these emails. If you'd like to be a patron or a donor, please click here. If you'd like to be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.

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