One of the dangers of numbers

One (fair) complaint about evidence-based public management -- when it relies on quantitative assessments of performance, social problems, etc. -- is that numbers sometimes create a sense of definiteness and finality.  The news out of Colorado related to the recent flood provides a good example.




The news story is here.

The emergency management lesson is to be hesitant to accept fatality and "missing person" numbers within the first 72 hours (sometimes longer) of an event.  These numbers are usually very quick estimates.  You may recall from the explosion in West that there were large numbers of people listed as "missing" and many of them became listed as "dead or presumed dead."  This created a significant political struggle between emergency management officials (who were saying not to read much into the number of missing persons yet) and political officials (who felt any hesitation about the numbers was a failure to respect the losses in the community).  A major state politician went forward with an estimate of the death toll that was multiple times the final number.  In Colorado, I suggest again suggest caution.  "Missing" often means "unavailable when someone attempted to reach."  Given the chaotic nature of communication in the area, I suspect most of the people listed as missing will turn up within a week or so.  This is not to trivialize the tragedy or the call for help -- but don't read too much into the specific numbers this early in an event.

The significance for EBPM is less obvious.  The concern is that numbers create reification wherein people tend to attribute undue power to the specific number.  Ironically, it is people who are least comfortable with quantitative reasoning that are the most likely to read too much into a number.  EBPM practitioners need to remember that all numbers are estimates and not all measures are perfect (or, even, very good).  Numbers are great but they are not all created equally and some estimates require caution in interpretation.  It is as much the responsibility of a EBPM practitioner to remember this as it is to communicate the uncertainty around his or her numbers in analytic memos, etc.