Does Not Compute
So this is the day I write about math, the day after Pi Day (Pi + 1). It’s better than writing about the Ides of March. Maybe only slightly better, though.
“Don’t be afraid of math,” was the cheery message at the presentation on math and journalism I went to week a couple of weeks ago. Spurn math and you’ll cut yourself out of plum assignments. Spurn math and your accounts will be a mess. Spurn math and you’ll miss the story.
Our lives run on numbers, whether we like them or not. Make peace with them. But that presupposes one has numbers to make peace with. Here is a brief tally :
Number of math classes I’ve had since high school: 1
Number of real math classes I’ve had since high school: 0
Number of business articles I’ve written: 1
Number of times I’ve written about numbers in this blog: 2 (see also Seven Times Seven)
Number of times I have not: 953
Number of times since elementary school that I helped my kids with math: 0
All of which is to say that when it comes to numbers, the only way for me to go is up.
One thought on “Does Not Compute”
Your timing is excellent. You couldn’t pick a better time for numerical adventures: the start of the baseball season. I don’t know any sport that realizes itself so completely in numbers.
You could begin with Ty Cobb’s lifetime batting average: .367. A ratio of hits to at-bats that indicated he failed slightly less than two-thirds of the times he walked to the plate. This is a superhero percentage and the reason he was one of the first inductees into the Hall of Fame. Or Hank Aaron’s 755 career home runs long before steroids. Or Cy Young’s 511 wins, ahead of “The Big Train” Walter Johnson” by 20, but the Train pitched for the mostly hapless Washington Senators. Or DiMaggio’s hitting streak of 56 consecutive games in 1941, probably the apogee number in the game.
Consider starting with ERA. Slugging percentage? Most of us would have to Google that one.