Professor Sparrow eased themselves into the chair in the Head’s office.
“I’m just here for my scheduled recurring career narrative update and real-time performance and span of activities assessment”, they said as they sat down.
“Very good. Very good. But before we start I just want to share this”, the Head replied pushing a document over the desk.
Its our annual Compensation, Remuneration And Performance Report hot off the press from the Consultant. Very exciting. Did you know that the university’s total wage and salary bill depends on the number of people we employ, and the amount we pay them? Who would have thought?”.
“Well, yes”, Sparrow replied cautiously, “That does seem to make sense”.
“Oh yes, absolutely”, the Head said enthusiastically. “It’s all here in the report. They used something very sophisticated – let me look. Ah yes, here it is. Linear regression I believe it’s called. It shows that our total salary bill is some complicated equation based on how many people we employ and what we pay them. There’s a thing called an R-squared. I don’t really understand it myself, but ours is very good. Almost 1 believe. Total staff wages and salary is somehow related to how many staff we have and what our average payment to staff is”.
“I see”, Sparrow replied. “Um, I may be wrong about this, but isn’t the average just the total amount divided by the number of staff, so if you take the average and you multiply it by the number, you’ll just get the total amount back again. Doesn’t that make sense?”.
“Oh no, I don’t think so”, the Head answered, “that’s not what the linear regression shows”.