I've been doing a great deal of reading recently on how different cultures (business and otherwise) apply, recognize and accept metrics. Some of this appeared in discussions with Christopher Berry (see links below) and of course the discussions of Engagement are far from over, me thinks. They may pitter away and they're far from over. But my readings have taken me from how science professionals infer metrics -- something incredibly important to their salaries more often than not -- to how different languages create numeric structures and the values these language groups and cultures assign to these structures. The western model of numeric order is far from the only one, it is merely the prevalent one. It's only been prevalent for about 3,000 years. Human cultures go back about 450,000 years (and some folks suggest even further).
There is an exercise NextStage does in some of its trainings that demonstrates how people conceptualize numbers differently. One of the things it demonstrates is that most people have difficulty recognizing discrete elements beyond 10. Show people 9 or so apples and ask them how many there are, they'll usually do a quick count and say "Nine" or maybe "About ten", something like that. Show them eleven apples and they'll say "A lot". This is one reason those "Guess how many jelly beans are in the jar" raffles work so well. You could compute the exact number and the majority of people wouldn't even if they could.
This lack of desire despite ability is the nub of all the "what's the value of these metrics?" debates, me thinks.
