RRPC: Making Sense of the Numbers

Yes, it's Round Robin time again! Jill of South Bay Soliloquy suggested this week's topic, By The Numbers. As an accountant, my job (when I have one) is to work with numbers - calculating, pasting, sorting and formatting them until they generate results that check out, make sense and mean something. Most of the time, it's a game for me, where the object is to figure out where the numbers belong and what to do with them to generate the right answers. Even as an unemployed accountant, I've been known to fire up Excel 2003 and build a spreadsheet or two or three.

Not everyone finds numbers interesting.

From the Picasa album Round Robin Photo Challenges

When I was in college the first time, I was an English and Film major. Having struggled in high school Algebra and Trigonometry, I took no math classes whatsoever at Syracuse University. I'd never heard of a spreadsheet. Microsoft Office didn't exist yet. I knew that Syracuse had a School of Management, but couldn't conceive what it was for. I've mentioned this before, but it's still true: my mom used to tell me, in the years after I left S.U. without a degree, "I think it would be fun to be a night auditor at a motel." She would then explain the joy of adding up numbers in double entry bookkeeping until it all reconciled perfectly. I thought she was out of her mind!

Numbers don't always say cheerful things.

But in 1991 (or was it 1990?) I let Travel Network convert me from a travel agent into a bookkeeper, and was astonished to discover that I liked to work with numbers. I moved on to Worldwide Travel in 1992 as their bookkeeper/ comptroller / operations manager, and continued to learn how accounting worked. In late 2002 I went to the University of Phoenix to turn that old unfinished B.A. into a B.S. in Business/Accounting. After I got the degree in 2005, I found at job as a staff accountant for First Magnus, a mortgage company.

You can make numbers prettier, but that
doesn't change the underlying meaning.

If you see an unhappy ending to that part of the story, you're right. First Magnus crashed and burned, and so did Beaudry RV, where I worked after that. Even Worldwide Travel is gone now. But none of that is the fault of the numbers, all that financial data I entered, extracted, formatted and reported on for those companies. The numbers only reported on what was happening. They didn't cause what happened.

Numbers don't always make sense.

As I wait for (look for, and apply for) a job, I'm also back to studying accounting, this time with the CPA exam specifically in mind. There are times when I'm sleepy or bored or tired, and the numbers in the sample test questions I'm studying just don't make sense to me.

But there's almost always a correct answer to be found.
(Intermediate Accounting homework, dated March 2004.)

So I take a break, get a soda, check my email or whatever, and come back - and make the numbers tell me their secrets.

A quick note: these were all taken with my new Canon PowerShot SX110 IS, which I bought Friday after my Sony Cybershot decided not to turn on even with a fully charged battery. The old camera was sent off to a servicing center by the Geek Squad, because it turned out I bought a 4 year extended warranty for it back in late 2006. John isn't happy about the expense, but I can't go without a working camera, and not just because of these Challenges!

I got the new Canon for $199.99 ($30 under the sale price) at Best Buy, thanks to another customer who gave me a printout of an Office Depot ad, which Best Buy price matched. Bottom line: I got a midrange quality camera, better than a compact one and less awesome than an SLR, for far less than any other camera in that category, and less than I paid for the Cybershot in 2006. Next task: to learn to use it properly!

Oh, and all the special effects here, including negative, paint bucket and magic mirror, were done in my cheap/free photo editing software, ArcSoft PhotoStudio 5.

Now let's see what the other Robins did with numbers!


Linking List

Jill - Posted!
South Bay Soliloquy
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Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
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SuzyQ421's Photo Blog
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Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
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Maraca
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Chris - Posted!
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Linda - Posted!
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Marina - Posted!
visual chronicle
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Wammy
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Karen **Welcome, New Member!***
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Terri - Posted!
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Mojo - Posted!
Why? What Have You Heard?
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Jen**Welcome New Member** - Posted!
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Karen