Maths in practice

I am sometimes asked, mainly by people thinking of a career in accountancy, or by their parents, what level of maths ability is needed. My answer, based on my experience in the profession, is, ‘not much’.

A decent level of numeracy is essential. I should say that I have seen a reduction in the ability of my younger colleagues from estimating the total of a column or row of numbers ‘by eye’; or the ability to roughly guess results of calculations. I think a confidence with working with numbers is something which is needed to be a competent advisor.

Beyond that, not much. I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I have been required to do more complex calculations. This blog is about one, my first, and most memorable. I may blog separately about other occasions.

Christmas 1984: Band Aid’s ‘Do they Know it’s Christmas’ was number one, and I had been working for a few months. I had a full weekend in Stafford, along with numerous colleagues, on a stocktake, at B Limited. B was a manufacturer, and had a warehouse full of wire rods. Some with large diameter, say a few cms, easy to count; some with diameters down to millimetres, and as the rawest junior, I got to count those. They were stacked high, to a high ceiling, so that ladders were needed: and the method was to lie on the floor, chalk in hand, and count one by one, chalking off each rod; then getting up onto your knees, then standing, then using the ladder…one stack could take half a day or more, and my eyes went squinty, and it was easy to lose where you were in the count, and have to restart. So I learned methods of not having to do total recounts.

Two days of my life were spent counting such rods: I knew no better, and this was how it had always been done. The client closed down for a week, because prior to the audit check, the workforce had done a similar count, and it was our role to do spot checks, and, if there were differences, examine and resolve them.

Christmas 1985, and Shakin’ Stevens ‘Merry Christmas Everyone‘ was number one (though I would have preferred Whitney Houston’s ‘Saving all my love for you’ which Shakin’ ousted). I was more experienced then, and had started to get an appreciation of what auditing was, and started to think about my work, rather than just follow orders.

That year, I was counting larger diameter rods, as befitted my progress; and it was far easier, and I had time to think.

Then maths came to mind: what if we calculated the packing density, measured the height and width of the stack, and estimated the number of rods in the piles? So I worked out the approximate packing density, did the measuring, and….the results were near perfect. A 3 or 4 hour count could be reduced to 3 or 4 minutes. We did a sample, it was virtually precise, and had our weekend free again (free to study for our exams, no doubt).

Furthermore, and this story doesn’t have a happy ending, due to the relative low value of the stockholding compared with the size of the company, we told our client that they, too, could avoid the week’s close down and overtime, calculate the holdings in the same way, and a small handful of us, rather than a large team, could again sample check.

Perfect, except as Billy Ocean would have told us in the spring of 1986, ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’….the unions threatened to go on strike if management changed the procedures, which would have stopped them earning double time.

Management relented, the warehouse shutdown each year so that the one-by-one count could continue (but we did our maths).

A few years later, B went bust; and the site is now a retail centre.

Nearly thirty years later, I still remember the practical lessons this taught me.

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