the.com/benchmark
A number that turns 'it's good' into 'it's 73.2% good,' which feels like progress.
means A standard or reference point used to measure, compare, or evaluate the performance of something.
from From surveying: a 'bench mark' was a chiseled notch cut into stone or a wall where a surveyor's bracket (or 'bench') could be fitted to hold an instrument steady, marking a point of known height used to measure elevation of everything around it. By the 1800s the term had already climbed off the stone and into general use as a word for any fixed point of reference against which other things are measured.
- origin
- Surveyors cut marks in stone as fixed reference points
- dark side
- optimize the benchmark, not the thing it measures
- goodhart's law
- any benchmark that becomes a target stops measuring anything
- tech usage
- the score chipmakers love, real users never notice