Physics Experiments - Corporate Policies

For all those who have done physics experiments would have remembered getting the results. Even if few people have not done it, still, they would have seen their classmates doing it.

For those who do not know the meaning of getting the results,

Physics experiments are to verify the theories mentioned in Physics. For example, an experiment can be verifying that gravitational force is 9.8 m/s². When they do the experiment, they observe readings in the given experiment. After that, they apply certain procedures by using few formulae and finally get the result of the experiment.

Before doing the experiment, the student knows what the answer he/she should get. Due to experimental errors, it is not possible to get the exact answer. So, (in this case) it may vary from 9.3 to 10.5. If the student does not perform it properly, it may vary from 6 to 15. So, many does reverse engineering. First they fix the final result. Generally, they don't fix at the exact value. Since, it will not look realistic. Once they fix the final result, they calculate what should be the values in the last but one step. Once they get those values, they calculate the values of it's previous step, and finally, they will calculate what the observed values should be, and write that in their records. From the observed values (not the real observed values, but the values that they got by reverse engineering), they apply the formulae, and finally they get the value which they wanted. In this process, they get whatever the value they want.

Recently, I came to know that, it is not just students, but also many companies follow this procedure.

One of the biggest software companies of India does almost the same for giving promotions. Every year, few days before their annual review cycle, they announce the criteria for the promotions for that year. And within few days, they will announce the list of the people who got promotions (whoever satisfied that criteria). If anyone wants to get promotion, it is simply not in their hands. Since, they announce the criteria at the last minute, and those who had already done those things would get promotion, and others will not. The correct way should be, they should announce the criteria and if anyone follows that for that year, then next year, they should get the promotion. But, what this company does is, they announce the criteria, and if anyone had done that in the last year, they would get the promotion. They have a reason to do like that. They have some budget, and within that budget, they will calculate how many promotions they can give. Then, they get the details of all the employees, and what each person has done in that year. Then, they will come up with the criteria, for which the no.of employees satisfy the criteria is almost same as the no.of promotions they can give, and give promotions to everyone who satisfies that criteria.

I heard that there are companies which gives ratings to other markets based on some formula. Few companies gets the formula, and just optimizes on it, and gets the best rank, eventhough their services/products are not so good. They said, it is because of that reason, why so many A star rating companies also went down during recession.

For ratings like Best Employer etc., sometimes, the organizers disclose on what criteria they provide the ranking. If a company has huge cash reserve, and wants to get good brand name, then they just work on that criteria, and gets good rank. I heard from one senior employee of an MNC that, the HR of that company worked hard on the criteria, and they became the Best Employer.