Anthony Tasgal

"What the spreadsheet has done is to create in organisations and governments an over-reliance on numbers (by no means always meaningful or even accurate) with the result that often spurious numerical targets, metrics or values invariably override any conflicting human judgment. This has given rise to what a colleague of mine, Anthony Tasgal, calls “The Arithmocracy”: a powerful left-brained administrative caste which attaches importance only to things which can be expressed in numerical terms or on a chart. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not making a trite “price of everything but value of nothing” point, nor am I attacking genuine science. I object to the spreadsheet precisely because of the pseudo-science involved, and the way numbers create a semblance of mathematical rigour which lends some measures or extrapolations an influence they don’t deserve."