Numbed by Numbers: Why Quants
Don’t Know Everything 

January, 2014 

“Quants are people whose native tongue is numbers and algorithms and systems rather than personal relationships or human intuition.”

“Once the quants come into an industry and disrupt it, they often don’t know when to stop. They tend not to have decades of institutional knowledge about the field in which they find themselves.”

“And once they’re empowered, quants tend to create systems that favor something pretty close to cheating. As soon as managers pick a numerical metric as a way to measure whether they’re achieving their desired outcome, everybody starts maximizing that metric rather than doing the rest of their job—just as Campbell’s law projects.”

“Campbell’s Law says the more that numbers are used for political purposes, the more they will be manipulated—and distort the decisions they were supposed to inform.”

“It’s increasingly clear that for smart organizations, living by the numbers alone simply won’t work.”

Felix Salmon,
a financial journalist 
and the finance blogger for Reuters.