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by shellback3
1595 days ago
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McNamara cut his teeth on real world problems in the AAF's Office of Statistics and worked with General Curtis LaMay to plan how best to use the B29 bombers. He became an expert with statistics and other math tools and thought they could be widely applied to business and, of course, war. Once he had these marvelous tools he found nails everywhere. For instance the rate of German tank production was accurately estimated by collecting the serial numbers of all the tanks (and some tank components) that were knocked out. Best methods of attacking submarines was worked out this way as well as well as where to place armor in bombers, etc. |
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He also found two presidents and a sycophantic media that hung on his every word.
His figures were excellent. In the earliest days of Vietnam, long before anyone outside of Asia could find it on a map, he produced eerily precise predictions of the costs -- in lives, dollars and time -- of the future conflict. He told them what a civil war in the jungle would look like and they pulled the trigger.
As far as the value of measurement goes; I think most of the low hanging fruit has been picked (a consequence of the "Information Age") and what we struggle to 'measure' today is far less tractable. As a result our measurements are frequently corrupted in the service of prevailing agendas or not permitted at all for fear of undesirable results.