Grade Point Averages (GPA) are the sole preserve of lazy college academics. It was only because my daughters are in an American school system in Zurich that I started to understand the obsession with this rather bizarre statistic. For those of you who are unfamiliar, teachers will score pieces of work, tests and quizzes throughout the year and grade them using a marking rubric (if the teachers are well disciplined). Gifted students might get A’s or A- and more challenged students might be getting Fs in a specific assignment.
A useful thing to do might be to look at the mode or highest frequency of As and eliminate outliers which would give you good insight on the level of competence and attainment of the student in History or Biology. Averaging them only lets you see the dumbed down version not the frequency of high scores. Averaging within a subject has its flaws but is not nearly as crazy as averaging across multiple subjects. You could have a straight A student in Art, History and Physics who happens to be failing at PE, German and Chemistry. It is impossible to judge the true talent of a student using this GPA.
Why is this important? Many Colleges and Universities particularly in the USA will base part of their decision to select a student based on their GPA. One assumes their decision will focus mostly on exam results and interview outcomes, but why use it at all? What they may be oblivious to is the behaviour it triggers way down the line in schools. Instead of being inspired to learn, be curious, to challenge themselves to take risks and explore areas they feel less confident in, they start to take the easier options. This is because they do not want to damage their magical and pointless GPA. This mindset is infectious and not in a good way.
I urge colleges to remove this requirement both from practical decision making but also to communicate the shift to the schools they draw students from. Our world needs our young people to function as problem solvers, thinkers, risk takers and people able to collaborate with others. This metric pushes them to avoid risk, learn less and go for the easy route. Find better metrics to assess knowledge, skills and personal attributes and avoid the law of average.
A colleague shared a great image with me once that if you have one foot in ice water and one in boiling the result is not warm feet but two very unhappy ones. Individual points of data and information are sometimes the only true insight.
With a science background and in a world of fake news I believe it is always good to refer to facts and sometimes figures. The question is – are we using the right figures? In the world of work, the use and misuse of metrics and key performance indicators linked to bonus pay-outs can have positive and devastating effects. Some of those metrics drive people to create sales that are toxic to the profit of the company but make the top line look good. Some of those metrics make you drive cost down to the point where you damage your relationship with your customers and hire people who don’t have the skills to do your work well. Some metrics will stop you investing in the maintenance of your infrastructure that might cause a safety hazard or worse. When using any metric look at both the good and bad behaviours it drives and make sure you have a counterbalance in place.
I am a big fan of measuring individual competence and not averaging it at all, as you will get the same outcome as the GPA. A meeting expectations performance review tells you absolutely nothing to help develop the skills, knowledge and attributes of the employee. It gives no specific feedback as to what the person needs to do differently to perform better. Attempting to assess specific competence areas of a person using a meaningful scale can be useful to the individual. This, in conjunction with regular focussed conversations and personal commitment to improve, will generate more individual and company value than an annual show and tell.
As we use more and more data to make sense of our world, we must always keep a close eye on the true meaning of the metric, whether it is telling us the whole story, trigger the right conversations and decisions. Beware of inappropriate averages!
