While writing I was wondering if I should clarify that or if my meaning would come through even if I was somewhat imprecise—thanks for settling that.
My point here is that ROI is a ratio of something gained (or saved) over something invested, and while you can reasonably say you’ve “saved” some number of issues it’s silly to talk about “investing” some number of issues.
It doesn’t really matter for the rest of the argument, since the steelman tries to reconstruct investments and gains from the numbers given, but I’ve amended my sentence to say “something similar to dimensional analysis” instead.
What you said in the above comment is not what you wrote in the article. I’d encourage you to rewrite that section to be what you said here, as its a valid argument but one that’s very different from what you wrote. And for me at least, your dimensional analysis point made me stop and go “huh?” and now I’m reading comments instead of the rest of your otherwise quite interesting article.
Thanks for the additional prod towards clarity. Removed mention of dimensional analysis altogether and updated with the content of the comment I wrote to defend the weak spot. (It’s galling, but this is a technique I actually try to teach others from time to time—when you feel the need to write something in defense of your writing, put that into the original piece instead.)
While writing I was wondering if I should clarify that or if my meaning would come through even if I was somewhat imprecise—thanks for settling that.
My point here is that ROI is a ratio of something gained (or saved) over something invested, and while you can reasonably say you’ve “saved” some number of issues it’s silly to talk about “investing” some number of issues.
It doesn’t really matter for the rest of the argument, since the steelman tries to reconstruct investments and gains from the numbers given, but I’ve amended my sentence to say “something similar to dimensional analysis” instead.
What you said in the above comment is not what you wrote in the article. I’d encourage you to rewrite that section to be what you said here, as its a valid argument but one that’s very different from what you wrote. And for me at least, your dimensional analysis point made me stop and go “huh?” and now I’m reading comments instead of the rest of your otherwise quite interesting article.
Thanks for the additional prod towards clarity. Removed mention of dimensional analysis altogether and updated with the content of the comment I wrote to defend the weak spot. (It’s galling, but this is a technique I actually try to teach others from time to time—when you feel the need to write something in defense of your writing, put that into the original piece instead.)