Abstract

“It can hardly be doubted that Noah, when he saw a fine fish rising out of reach to right or left of the Ark's line of drift, would have given a lot to have been able to control its direction, and Noah's wish has certainly been echoed and re-echoed by those of our lake fishermen who, from necessity or choice, fish without a boatman.”
In this manner, William Sealy Gosset, in the guise of STUDENT, chose to lead into one of his lesser-known articles, published in 1936, about how an angler might manage the relationship between his raft and the currents in a lake.
Indeed, the need to manage a relationship occurs in many workplace settings, and in turn may imply the need to measure the relationship. This presentation reviews some of the issues that arise in the process of finding meaningful relationship measures, using as an example the problem of how to rate universities. When viewed through the lens of relationship measurement and management, all the major World University Ranking systems appear to have significant inadequacies. We present a “thought experiment” that purports to satisfy reasonable requirements for such systems.