Measure Direction

A measure direction is which way a reading has to move to be a better result. It says nothing about what the reading measures or how it is built, only which direction counts as improvement, because a number rising is not news until someone says whether rising is the point.

What you can do with a measure direction

• tableEvidence Plan · Evidence

Its measure directions— 3

• Higher is betterImprovement is the reading going up. The ordinary case for volume, rate and value readings, where more of the thing measured is the outcome wanted.
• Lower is betterImprovement is the reading going down. The case for cost, rank and error readings, where the reading measures what has to be spent or got wrong to produce the result.
• Target bandImprovement is the reading staying inside a stated range, and movement in either direction out of it is the same failure. The case for readings where too much is as wrong as too little.

Why it matters

What goes wrong without it, as the commitments that license this kind say it, each standing on its sources.

• Make outcome quality, calculation method and attribution inspectableAn outcome number is only as good as the inputs, exclusions and window that nobody wrote down. Media measurement standards exist because outcome claims circulate detached from their method, and a figure with no stated method cannot be challenged, reproduced or compared against anyone else's. Keeping what a measure means apart from how it is computed is what makes either one reviewable.
  Outcomes and Data Quality Standards · Declaring the Grain · Measuring Visibility in the AI Era · Data-driven multi-touch attribution models · Causally motivated attribution for online advertising · A Comparison of Approaches to Advertising Measurement: Evidence from Big Field Experiments at Facebook · Why Three Exposures May Be Enough · Digital Audience-Based Measurement Standards