Evan Coopersmith

Failures are painful. We take great pains to avoid failure, to remedy our errors, and in our less emotionally secure states, to minimize or even obscure those failures. To err is human, but apparently, our nervous systems never received the memo.

There are innumerable statistics devoted to the quantification of failure, from server downtime to sums of fraudulent charges to penetration test vulnerabilities to errors in baseball.&nbsp;

And this seems straightforward enough - count the number of minutes when the server failed to function last month, divide by the number of minutes in the month, and voila, a failure statistic. Sum the fraudulent charges, divide by the total value of all the purchases made, and there’s another.&nbsp;

This is easy…if the denominator is easily defined and viewed.

Each day in the life of domestic partners (spouses, roommates, cellmates, etc) consists of small decisions that have the potential to irritate. Perhaps there is the trash that was not taken out, some stray hair left in the sink, some logistical task that ought to have been completed, but was forgotten.&nbsp;

Soon, the frothy discourse and recriminations begin.

But amidst the acrimony is an undercurrent of implied failure rates. How many such arguments contain some variant of “you always do that!” or “why do we keep having this conversation?”

And it is at this moment when suddenly, each party is imagining two very different denominators and as a result, two extraordinarily different failure statistics.

Both parties acknowledge the single instance of failure - the trash is still sitting in the bin, it ought to have been dealt with. This is the easy part.

Of course, the offending party is probably thinking about the last dozen instances in which they successfully completed the task, to say nothing of the dishes they unloaded, the mail they collected, opened, and shredded, the toilet paper roll they replaced a couple hours back, etc. They recognize that their day consisted of numerous opportunities to drop the ball and as a result, see their personal failure statistic as wholly reasonable.

The recent instances in which an opportunity to fail occurred and failure did not were largely invisible. No one really notices when the seemingly minor tasks of domestic life are completed satisfactorily, with neither reminder nor issue. This leads to, in one partner’s mind, a smaller denominator. And then, when inevitably, something is missed, a chasm emerges between each party’s perception - it is not the numerator in question.1

Generally, this leads to the common refrain of “why doesn’t he/she/they see everything I do right around here?” or “why are we always focusing on the negative?”

In baseball, fielding percentage is a simple enough calculation. Calculate the number of errors, divide by the number of “chances,” and subtract the result from 100%.&nbsp;

Of course, none of this has any value whatsoever without a clear definition of a “chance.”&nbsp;

When a catcher fails to catch a pitched ball from the mound and a runner advances as a result, this is not considered an “error.” Why not? Because if such a miscue on the part of the catcher were an “error,” then every pitch from the mound would be a “chance.”2 The denominator would be enormous.3 Worse, all the other “chances” (fielding bunts, throwing out would-be base-stealers, put-outs at the plate, etc) would be inconsequential in a failure statistic where 99% of the denominator consists of pitched balls.&nbsp;

Catchers receive 10,000+ pitches each season and often 100,000+ over the course of their careers.

Failure statistics are often misleading, but not because we cannot agree on what “failure” entails.&nbsp;

Failure statistics are often misleading because we cannot agree on what success entails. Those denominators are pesky.

Failures are typically visible. The project fails. The ground balls skitters between the legs of an infielder. That phishing effort landed the scammers the CEO’s login information.

Do we have any idea how many opportunities for failure were presented amidst these highly-visible sources of frustration?&nbsp;

Even now, as you ponder those examples, can you even define for yourself what that denominator should be? And worse, how easily could you gather the relevant information?5

Apart from the baseball example where, admittedly, geeks like me have been compiling such trivia and posting them all over the internet replete with commentary and vitriol.

No one knows how many times they’ve remembered to take out the trash in the past year. No one knows (off the top of their head anyway) how many routine ground balls that shortstop has handled without incident in the past month. And certainly, no one knows how many phishing emails have been unceremoniously deleted recently.6

And which should count? Only spear-phishing efforts? What about those typo-laden emails from Nigerian prices? What about an email from that fool in accounting who asks for the corporate account number, not realizing it probably shouldn’t be written in an email that will be archived for eternity?

Al Pacino had it right when he paraphrased the CIA motto in “The Recruit.” Simply, “Our failures are known. Our successes are not.”7

&nbsp;https://inteltoday.org/2021/03/14/cia-our-failures-are-known-our-successes-are-not-joke/

As we assess and lament our failures, we would be well-advised to recognize when we see a numerator and subtly, imply a ratio.

Math teachers would call B.S. swiftly.&nbsp;

Professionals and spouses would be well-advised to do the same.

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