Quantified Living

This blog is about living life, and also quantifying various aspects of it as they occur. Why bother? Why Quantify? Reticent as I am to quote  management gurus , Peter Drucker did usefully say: "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it.” Despite popular belief, even - or perhaps especially - in scientific circles, measurement doesn’t have to be numerical. Quantity can be measured by a simple ordering: this is more than that. Frank et al. ( 2008 ) contend that the Pirahã, who famously do not have numbers, still can and do compare quantities of things. But it is easier to summarise the relationships between numbers over time and space if we express them numerically, and many tools have been developed within mathematics to do just that. In quantifying my own life, and talking about it on this blog, I plan to exploit whatever techniques I can. It has to be Worth it A fundamental requirement for me is that the effort I put into measurement and analysis pay off. I’m...