This article intrigued me because I love math, and I'm always interested in someone's take on how the platform calculates metrics. My favorite non-humanity classes were high school geometry and college calculus. The use of ratios is the backbone of my career. I haven't paid much attention to my Medium stats, but if I ever think of it as a way to earn money, I look at those numbers daily.

The read-per-view ratio is a good engagement measurement, but I don't trust it. I can't find a solid definition of "read" in Medium's documentation. How or when does a view become a read? I've noticed that my drafts include a word count and read time. I have done the math to calculate seconds per word across many drafts, and there is no standard. I got this information when I asked Mediums help search, "what constitutes a read."

Views

Number of visitors who clicked on a story's page. This number will also capture any views of your story that are read via RSS readers (such as Pocket), and those will be indicated with a "+" sign next to the primary view count.

Reads

Number of visitors who have read the entire story (an estimate).

The part about a read being an estimate makes me weary of its reliability.

After I retire and write more often, I'll need to find a way to measure and improve reads. I think your advice in the conclusion is a solid place to begin. And the ratio Medium uses to inform me doesn't have to be accurately defined as long as it trends with my gut correctly.