Does anyone know why there is no ability to view progress/statistics towards particular badges or just have the overall ability to look at progress for accounts?  I feel like this would be very helpful.

I found the following post mentioning that this behavior is by design, but I fail to see why that decision was made.  I'm not criticizing, I am genuinely curious.

http://meta.superuser.com/questions/2999/showing-progress-towards-badges