Mene, Mene, Tekel . . .

In a previous blog post in this series, with the same title, I reflected on the difficulty of assessing the success of different strategies being pursued by a research funding body on whose Board I served at the time. The blog considered different quantitative measures but ended up with more of a focus on qualitative approaches and the organization's formal report, when it was finished and presented to Parliament, made substantial use of case studies as well as numbers. I must stress that I am not claiming significant credit for that fact: the committee I chaired benefited greatly from very wise advice from a number of senior civil servants, industrialists and representatives of charities.