How to Measure Anything
Douglas Hubbard
27 people recommended it in 16 threads, 2015–2026.
5 commenters pushed back on it — worth reading the threads.
What people on Hacker News said
Presents a few simple techniques (confidence intervals, Monte Carlo simulations, regression analysis, Bayes, etc) to help with decision-making. E.g., should we build this feature or spend the same money on marketing?
Basically, "if something matters, it's because it affects something that can be measured". So you identify the causal chain from "thing" to "measurable thing", have people who are trained in "calibrated probability assessment" estimate the weights of the effects in the causal chain, then build a mathematical model, and use a Monte Carlo simulation to work out how inputs to the system affect the outputs.
Many other books explain how our thinking can be flawed (Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow", Ralf Dobelli's "The Art of Thinking Clearly"), but this book gives you some actual real-world mathematical tools to avoid flawed thinking.
How To Measure Anything - Douglas Hubbard. - Maybe one of the most important books I've ever read. The ideas in this book can apply in many domains, related to startups or otherwise. I can't recommend this one highly enough.
How to Measure Anything by Douglas Hubbard. It's pretty much what the title says. This is powerful stuff. Explains how to measure "things" that - at first blush - seem impossible (or really hard) to measure.
But it did change my idea of what can be analyzed and measured. The beginning is repetitive. Some of it is very unorthodox. But it was very useful in detailing how to evaluate risk.
How to Measure Anything -- Douglas Hubbard. Sort of makes me mad because it is so commonsense, yet most businesses don't apply this commonsense approach.
A good example to study is How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business by Douglas Hubbard.
I consider his book How To Measure Anything to be one of the best / most important books I've read, and it's one I recommend to pretty much everybody.
This book is a treatise against the notion that some important things can’t be measured. Full of information about how to figure what should be measured and then how to measure it.
Where it comes up
- Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read? 2020 · 6 recommendations
- Ask HN: Which books do you consider real gems in your field of work/study? 2022 · 3 recommendations
- Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018? 2018 · 3 recommendations
- Ask HN: Books you read in 2018? 2018 · 2 recommendations
- Ask HN: Books you read in 2015? 2015 · 2 recommendations
- Ask HN: Would you read a statistics textbook? 2026 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: Math books that made you significantly better at math? 2023 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver? 2022 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in? 2022 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: Best books under 200 pages for developers? 2020 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything? 2019 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: As a technical founder what is the best business book you've read? 2018 · 1 recommendation
- Book recommendation: Measure what matters 2018 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: Books you wish you had read earlier? 2017 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: What are your favorite books? 2016 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days? 2015 · 1 recommendation