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Tushar Pathak
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Illustration of Tushar writing in an open notebook at a wooden desk by a window — a green lamp, a cup of tea, stacked books, a plant, and a sketched flow diagram on loose paper.
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Essay 02

I made my own numbers worse the day before submitting

A note on re-checking a pilot metric and reporting the smaller, honest number instead.

2 min readRelated project: TeachSpark → (opens in a new tab)Draft — pending sign-off

“Activated teachers dropped from 10 to 8. Median time saved fell from 37.5 minutes to 30. Papers went from 5 to 2.”
Source: TeachSpark — Final PRD §0
“Honest smaller numbers earn more trust than impressive fake ones.”
Source: TeachSpark — 9-Day Build Series (LinkedIn draft), Post 9

Draft — pending sign-off: this is a placeholder note, not the finished essay. It is built around a TeachSpark pilot moment — a late re-check found the activation and time-saved numbers had actually gotten worse than an earlier snapshot, and the decision was to report the smaller, honest numbers rather than the earlier, better-looking ones. The full essay, reasoning, and conclusion are not yet written.

Related project: TeachSpark → (opens in a new tab)