Feedback on the bike ride? I’ve a number of thoughts…

So the bike ride to London has been. How was it? Well here are the numbers:

119 (not 100)

Just under 12

4.30

Over 500

1

3

6.

Clear? Partially maybe. The sorts of questions that get asked after a challenge like riding between Bristol and London in a day are fairly predictable. How far is that? 119 miles (which is not, as I believed until I’d been riding for over 4 hours, a nice round 100 miles). Blimey. So how long did that take you. Just under 12 hours with various breaks. That’s a long day. You’re telling me. Alarm went off at 4:30am. How many people were doing it? Over 500. You get the picture. Or do you? You know facts about length, time, scale, but do you actually get a sense of what it was like?

You can probably imagine what it is like to ride that far, for that long. Imagine, that is, what it would be like for you to do that. But this was my challenge, my experience and I’d suggest that the numbers mean nothing in answering how it was for me.

I’ve become strangely animated over this point as I’ve handled the response to my ride. It was a tough day, threw up a range of physical and psychological challenges, gave me an insight into myself, my companion on the day, the sport of cycling, a narrow line of sight through several southern counties,. I’ve lots of thoughts on whether I’d do it again; tips I’d give anyone thinking of doing it; comparisons with other challenges I’ve done. Yet the questions I get asked are – how far, how long, how many… Numbers. People feel a need it seems to quantify the experience in order to assess it.

The reason I’ve become exercised by this is recognising how this obsession with quantitative analysis pervades so many other elements of life, and in my particular sphere, the evaluation of services. Working for a charity which receives income from both grant funding and earned income, the measurement of our work is forever couched in numbers. How many children will benefit? How many families will tick the box on the questionnaire that says the project made a difference? How many professionals will attend the course? What percentage will say that it increased their knowledge?

Recording qualitative experience so often seems to be regarded as the softer measure, the method of illustrating what the numbers say. I’ve never been satisfied with that and am feeling ever more convinced that attempts to quantify human experiences are flawed.

Whilst I freely admit to being more of a words person, I am by no means anti-numeric. Indeed I’ve a fascination with mathematics that comes from appreciating how powerful pure maths can be whilst accepting that I don’t speak the necessary language to harness that power. My passion for poker is stoked by trying to unpick the statistics and probability that, if mastered, counteract the element of luck on which the game hinges.

Therefore, numbers can tell you so much, but that requires a strong grasp of mathematical theory. I’d wager a fair amount that the vast majority of people who ask for impact reports, funding proposals, or even who design and circulate questionnaires have no such mathematical understanding. Consequently, it follows that judgements and big decisions based on quantitative measures are actually being made on evidence that is essentially meaningless. 500 disabled children benefitting sounds like a great return, but when the method of setting that target, or evidencing attainment is carried out without a genuine and transparent understanding of the statistics, the numbers just become a manipulated and artificial record of what is hoped for and delivered.

Qualitative measures carry similar dangers, of course. One brilliant case study does not factually prove anything other than what happened in that case. But it does illuminate what can happen more than the numbers. It can tell you the difference that one disabled boy and his parents got as articulated by them, by involved professionals, by factual measures. As long as the pressure to claim perfect success for every person is avoided, giving a smaller number of meaningful descriptions and analyses of impact is surely more satisfactory a measure for everyone than a series of spuriously arrived at percentages and figures to 2 decimal places.

But we live in a world keen on the expediency of headline numbers. So, the rest of the bike ride.

1 puncture

3 deer carcasses seen on the verges of the A4

6 single gloves spotted on the roadside along the route.

Gloves? Just discarded by the roadside? What sorts of gloves? Were they all in the same place? How do so many people lose one glove? Why were you counting gloves?? Ahh, well I think those are more interesting questions, but I have no numerical answer…