RCA
Elite Member
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2017
- Professional Status
- Certified General Appraiser
- State
- California
Read Douglas Hubbard's "How To Measure Anything: Finding the Value of “Intangibles” in Business" - which you can get on Amazon for Kindle. EVERY appraiser should read it, EVERY WORD. It should be a part of any Advanced Appraisal course.
https://www.howtomeasureanything.com/
"The concepts from Douglas Hubbard's books "How to Measure Anything" and "The Failure of Risk Management" are staples in the risk management and systems engineering classes I teach. They are hands-down some of the best books I've ever read on the concepts of measurement and risk for making better decisions. The chapters on why many well-known methods are really "analysis placebos" alone have helped me and countless students of mine change our way of thinking for the better. Every manager/decision-maker should read these books!!" [Richard Sugarman, Department Head, Air Force Institute of Technology. From LinkedIn]
There are many gems in this book. And I have to wonder how come this isn't in the Appraisal Institute book store or mentioned anywhere in appraisal literature. It deals with a very common problem mentioned on all appraiser forums: How do you estimate the value of such and such. Usually the problems have to do with intangibles - hard to measure things. And if you read this book, you will relate many things in it 1-1 to appraisal.
I like Hubbard's definition of measurement, which again is missing from USPAP and everywhere else, yet has always made sense to me from the first year I started appraising:
"Definition of Measurement: A quantitatively expressed reduction of uncertainty based on one or more observations." Hubbard, Douglas W.. How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business (p. 23). Wiley. Kindle Edition.
And from that, my definition of:
Acceptable Measurement: The most accurate measurement that meets or exceeds the aggregate requirements of an assignment.
https://www.howtomeasureanything.com/
"The concepts from Douglas Hubbard's books "How to Measure Anything" and "The Failure of Risk Management" are staples in the risk management and systems engineering classes I teach. They are hands-down some of the best books I've ever read on the concepts of measurement and risk for making better decisions. The chapters on why many well-known methods are really "analysis placebos" alone have helped me and countless students of mine change our way of thinking for the better. Every manager/decision-maker should read these books!!" [Richard Sugarman, Department Head, Air Force Institute of Technology. From LinkedIn]
There are many gems in this book. And I have to wonder how come this isn't in the Appraisal Institute book store or mentioned anywhere in appraisal literature. It deals with a very common problem mentioned on all appraiser forums: How do you estimate the value of such and such. Usually the problems have to do with intangibles - hard to measure things. And if you read this book, you will relate many things in it 1-1 to appraisal.
I like Hubbard's definition of measurement, which again is missing from USPAP and everywhere else, yet has always made sense to me from the first year I started appraising:
"Definition of Measurement: A quantitatively expressed reduction of uncertainty based on one or more observations." Hubbard, Douglas W.. How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business (p. 23). Wiley. Kindle Edition.
And from that, my definition of:
Acceptable Measurement: The most accurate measurement that meets or exceeds the aggregate requirements of an assignment.
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