Al Ries’ recent May 4 article in Advertising Age titled “Metric Madness” is, to put it lightly, dangerous thinking.

I do not disagree with the idea of running a marketing program, let alone a company or brand, by numbers alone. That is dangerous thinking also.

But to run it solely on intuition, or to even suggest that numbers and intuition are antagonistic (“right versus left-brained”), is to put it lightly again, narrow minded.

If one does not have the intuition to know what questions to ask, then how does one proceed to explore the data provided? To oversimplify the practice of mathematics as mindless number crunching is to perpetrate the phobia of math (why else do you think US students rank consistently low in math and science?).

In fact, my understanding is that math is the intuitive approach and holistic application of tools to solve problems (let’s hope Ries paid attention to that part of his integral calculus lectures). Intuition is built on a similar system – using tools to draw conclusions about the world around us.

To take the example of Apple that Ries uses in his article, yes – what Apple is doing is working, but (and here is where intuition is key) to continue maintaining its competitive edge, Apple has to understand the why and how. And that’s where math (analytics) comes in.

Knowing which marketing vehicle is generating the highest ROI allows Apple to optimize its resources against the successful efforts, while shifting resources away from the unsuccessful ones. Of course, defining ROI is up to Apple’s key stakeholders and leaders. An exercise also based on, you guessed it… intuition.

Otherwise, Apple could very well be throwing good money at bad investments. And isn’t that why we are in the current financial crisis to begin with? Remember that thing called subprime loans? Someone failed to check under the hood to see if the numbers made intuitive sense.