"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.