philipslearningcurve.com

Financial Statements in a nutshell

2011-10-09T04:37:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine recently had a problem with financialaccounting and I wrote him an email explaining the topic in a"nutshell." I guess we all have problems relating to balancesheets, income statements, and cash flow statements, so I wanted toshare the short "wrap up" with you.

Source:author

Villageonomics, or why many of our towns look increasingly like concrete blocks

2011-08-29T12:46:00.000-07:00

I grew up in a tiny village in Germany at the Rhine and I remember clearly that, although the place had only about 3,500 citizens, we had three bakeries, a butcher, two supermarkets, a toy shop, a carpentry, and a tobacco house. Last time I visited, all of those rustic perculiarities seemed to have disappeared, or rather, they've been moved into shopping mall-like zones outside of town. This development piqued my curiosity, so I decided to explore the field and found a pattern: villageonomics.

Source: author

The ingredients of a good stand-up speech

2011-07-30T14:54:00.000-07:00

The older I get, the higher theodds of me holding a (in)voluntary speech. It’s one of the things thatyou cannot dodge. One day or another, a relative, a friend, or simplyyour professional career will put you into a situation in which youbetter come up with something to say. In the beginning my forays inthis field were clumsy at best. They are still not perfect but tipsfrom colleagues, friends, and other sources helped me to collect threecore ingredients of a good speech. Add to that George Orwell’s six do’sand don’ts and you’re ready for the next minutes following thespoon-strike of the glass.

Picturefrom within the Paulskirche in Frankfurt
(first seat of the German parliament in 1848)

What do you mean "I'm quasi-rational?"

2011-07-10T09:54:00.000-07:00

"Sooo," the leftgentleman with the black glasses and the sleek, tailored suit beginsanother question, "after you've told us how you successfully managed abusiness unit for two years (you nod assent), and you accomplished theturn-around at your former employer (again, hastily nodding assent),and you single-handedly raised the funding for a future fortune 500company ("journalists", you hear yourself say fighting to restrain yourbeam), please tell us a bit about what you are actually not so goodat." A wet thud and the room's air suddenly turned into gelatinmuffling anything rudimentary reminding of a noise. Your grip at theknot of your tie misses its destination and you feel the first beads ofsweat trickling down your forehead. This would be the perfect time fora cricket to come out of the hideout and hit the legs, but thepedantically cleaned offices on floor 75 in Chicago's Willis Tower arehostile habitats to insects. You try to make sense of the pandemoniumin your head but after a while that feels like an hour you come toterms with the stinging fact: you have no clue about your weaknesses.

Source:sxc.hu

Correlation vs. Causality

2011-06-18T10:48:00.000-07:00

I was 17 when I boughtmy first issue of "Men's Health" and beingaddressed as a man probably was a bigger thing for me than gaining theinsight of how to get a six-pack in four days. In one of the firstissues I read the following statements: a new study shows, successfulmen sleep in their beds on the back and men, who happen to have abigger bellybutton are less likely to be selected for leadership rolesin their jobs. What a bummer! Usually sleeping on the side and bornwith a deeper navel, I was convinced that my live was already shatteredbefore it had even started.

You can imagine mysurprise and the amount of load that disappearedfrom my shoulders when I found out that those conclusions were prettymuch bullshit. Who would have thought that a statistics class at 8:30in the morning would provide the means for such a catharsis. My dilemmaand the conclusions from it are a classic example for the two evilforces challenging data analytics: correlation versus causation.Avoiding drilling too deep into math, the former says that there can befound a mathematical relationship between two or more things, and the lattermeans that this relationship has a quality of mutual influence to it (as in: cause and effect). It's always worth to consider bothaspects as we shall see.
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