Math for Grownups
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Math at Work Monday: Samantha the Freelance Designer

I had the pleasure of speaking with Samantha Volz who has the pleasure of working from her very own home every day. That is one of the benefits of being a freelance designer. In addition to graphic design, this artist also does photography. It seems she is creatively blessed with talent.  I was curious about how she uses math in her work. Let’s take a look at what she had to say:

Can you explain what you do for a living?

I’ve been working as a freelance designer since 2001.  I design marketing/advertising material for companies. In addition, I also design websites and other support files for social media applications. I am a photographer, painter, and artist as well.

When do you use basic math in your job?

I have to use specifications to set up design files. Set up bleed, trim and safe zones so that when the file gets to the printer, it is set up correctly and prints correctly. For instance, if I have a print sheet that is 8.5 by 11 inches for a trifold brochure, I need to divide the paper by three and adjust 1/8th of the 3 panel. Depending on how the trifold folds, I will need to adjust the panels 1/16th of an inch if a panel folds in. Then, on the layout in the software I have to consider set up for a printing press or digital printing if my graphics bleed to the edge I have to add at least 1/8th to 1/4th of an inch of graphics that extends past the actual final layout for being trimmed down to allow for machine error. So my final file that is handed over to the print vendor is 8.5 x11 with bleed 1/8th bleed on all sides. Total graphic coverage is 8.75 x 11.25 trimmed down to 8.5 x 11 and scored for folds indicated on the set up with 3 panels roughly 3.66 ” wide, again depends on the fold design chosen for that tri-fold brochure how it will read, flow and open up to reveal the information being provided.

Do you use any technology (like calculators or computers) to help with this math? Why or why not?

Yes, I use a calculator a lot.

How do you think math helps you do your job better?

I could not do my job without it. It is how everything flows from the client to me, the designer, and then to the printer until it is produced as an end product.

How comfortable with math do you feel? Does this math feel different to you?

I am comfortable with normal addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, and fractions. Nothing too complicated.

What kind of math did you take in high school? Did you like it/feel like you were good at it?

I took honors math classes.

Did you have to learn new skills in order to do the math you use in your job? Or was it something that you could pick up using the skills you learned in school?

Yes, what I use now I learned in high school.

Who knew that the creative type still need to know their basic calculations and fractions?  Seems like everywhere you go, even in your home, math is sure to follow. I hope you enjoyed learning a little more about Samantha. Let me know if you have any further questions for her. 

Photo Credit: 55Laney69 via Compfight cc

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In Math at Work Monday

Math at Work Monday: Craig the writer

Welcome week three of our month devoted to publishing and media. If you haven’t previous posts, what’s stopping you? So far, we’ve looked at book publishing and on-air meteorology (television weatherpersons). This week, it’s time to look at writing. Today you’ll meet Craig Guillot, a freelance writer in New Orleans, who specializes in finance writing, among other things. Craig is the author of Stuff About Money: No BS Financial Advice for Regular People, an ebook, which he says will be available in April. (I’m a source for one section!)

Bottom line? Math helps keep Craig profitable. So if you’re a budding freelance writer–or looking for ways to leave more on your bottom line–listen up.

Can you explain what you do for a living?

I’m a non-fiction freelance writer. My specialties include business, personal finance, retail, real estate, travel and entertainment. I’ve written for publications and web sites, such as Entrepreneur, CNNMoney.com, Washington Post, Nationalgeographic.com and dozens of trade publications. I also have a personal finance book Stuff About Money: No BS Financial Advice for Regular People.

When do you use basic math in your job?

In the actual writing, not much. Just like any other writer or journalist, I interview sources, research, take trips out in the field, gather information and write. I occasionally do a little photography and video too. I do use math on occasion in some of my personal finance work to demonstrate and calculate different things related to retirement and investing.

But I use math a lot in the background. Writing just happens to be my trade. Like any other self-employed person, I am ultimately running a business. As a freelancer I sell my services to editors and corporate clients. I have a lot of regular clients, but I’m constantly taking on new projects and new deals. I need to be able to carefully estimate my time and expenses to give a client an accurate quote.

To me, everything is about the hourly rate. I need to use this as a basis for building my income. And while my overhead isn’t much, I do have to know what’s going out to pay taxes, what’s going into savings, retirement and everything else. It may seem like part of my personal life but I consider it all part of my job. When you’re self employed, you have to constantly think about all of these things.

Do you use any technology (like calculators or computers) to help with this math?

I’m not sure I even have a calculator in my office anymore, but my main tool is Excel. I use it for everything, and I mean everything. It’s a calculator but so much more. There is no problem that can’t be solved, no analysis that can’t be made, in Excel. When you learn how to use it and how to write the formulas you need, you can do anything with it. I use it to analyze my revenues, analyze the profitability of certain assignments. Like everyone else, I use Quickbooks, but I also use Excel for background stuff.

I break everything down to a formula or percentage. This includes my monthly income goals. It doesn’t have to be that way. I don’t imagine it’s that way for many other writers but it works for me and helps me make the optimal decisions. I’ve used Excel to track, analyze and compute things in my regular life as well. I used it in the remodeling of our house, in tracking my net worth, in monitoring my investments, planning retirement, planning trips. I sit down, make up a spreadsheet, build some formulas, input the data and then use it to help make decisions. I run marathons and even use it to track my training runs and races. The more you learn how to use Excel and write formulas, the more uses you find for it.

How do you think math helps you do your job better?

One way it helps me is with analyzing my hourly rate and profitability. Whenever I take on special projects for a corporate client or a custom publisher, I use it to give a quote. I prefer to work on a project rate. I give them a single number but behind that is a lot of math that I have used to arrive at that number. They don’t need to know any of that.

I may also build in a variance. It will let me know if I might be able to live with a cut in that number. So if they want to try to negotiate that down a bit, I know that I can drop by 5%, 7%, 10% or whatever it might be for me to still make what I need to make.

I also need to factor in opportunity cost. That is what else I could be doing with my time. Do I take this project which will tie me up for three weeks or do I decline it and go after smaller but potentially more lucrative projects that will make my time more flexible? I use math to figure all this out.

How comfortable with math do you feel?

In relation to personal finance and business math, I feel very comfortable with it because I use it so much and see the value in it. But all the standard stuff you learn in school? I really don’t remember any of that. I’d have to pull out a book and look up some formulas if you wanted me to calculate cubic volume or something like that.

What kind of math did you take in high school?  Did you like it/feel like you were good at it?

Just the basics. Algebra, geometry, standard high school stuff. I wasn’t particularly good at it, I was just average. But I majored in business in college and took a lot of accounting, finance and business math classes. I always excelled at those and had a stronger interest in them. Math dealing with money just felt real to me. There was an instant connection of “Oh, I could actually use this someday.”

Did you have to learn new skills in order to do the math you use in your job? Or was it something that you could pick up using the skills you learned in school?

I did pick up some new skills, but a lot of the business and personal finance math I used today can be traced right back to college. The fact that I actually enjoy this kind of math really helps.

Anything else you want to mention?

Yes. I believe that many of our growing financial problems in this country—like people getting into mortgages they couldn’t afford, our lack of savings, our failure to put enough money away for retirement, our problems with credit card debt—can be traced partly to our failure to use math in our financial lives. People buy homes and cars on emotion but rarely run the numbers. They wouldn’t use debt to overspend if they really knew the long-term consequences. There is a numerical answer for everything in your finances. You have to know why that number is important, how to calculate it and how to use it.

Any questions for Craig? I’m sure he’d be happy to answer them!

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In Math for Grownups

Leaping into Self-Employment (Hint: Math helps!)

Photo courtesy of shimelle

Deciding to leave a steady job with a steady income is a big step.  Leaving in favor of working for yourself might seem like the craziest idea of all.  Believe me.  I know from experience.

I’ve been a freelance writer for going on 11 years now, about half of that time while holding down a part- or full-time job.  But when my family decided to move to Maryland, I figured it was a good time to try freelancing “without a net.”  I didn’t have a job yet, but I did have a Rolodex full of great editorial contacts and a good understanding of how to build a freelance career.

Over the last six years, I’ve grown my business in many ways: from part-time to full-time, from focusing on journalism to writing a book and shifting my attention to curriculum development.  (I did the latter, when the bottom fell out of the magazine industry a few years ago.)

I can say two things about this experience: Math definitely helped me launch and sustain my new career. And I couldn’t have made the leap without the support and advice of writer extraordinaire and all-around generous gal, Linda Formichelli.

I met Linda when we were both starting out, but she was about a year ahead of me in the process.   These days, Linda is an accomplished writer with two books (The Renegade Writer and Query Letters that Rock), bylines from countless top-notch publications and a booming coaching business.

One thing that any experienced and successful freelance writer knows is this: The writing is secondary.  Sure, I’m in it to write.  But without some really good business skills, no one will hire me to do what I love.  In other words, we’re business owners first and writers second.  (And this is true for almost anyone who runs their own business.)

Unlike me, Linda doesn’t have a degree in mathematics.  (Her Master’s from Berkley UC is in Slavic Languages.)  Doesn’t matter.  Linda has learned to apply math to her freelance business.  First up: dealing with the bottom line.

“I needed to figure out my hourly copywriting rate based on how much I needed total to make a living plus the amount I needed for overhead — equipment, office supplies, etc.,” Linda says. “I divided that by the number of billable hours I predicted I would have in a year, and also had to keep in mind the going rates — what the market would bear.”

So no, Linda was not consumed with the kinds of pens she would use or scribbling by candlelight each night.  The practical won over the romantic.  Even with magazines.

“Magazines usually pay by the word, and I needed to figure out how that translated to an hourly rate,” she says. “For example, I sometimes make more money per hour writing for 50 cents per word versus $2 per word because the $2 per word articles are much more research-intensive and often required multiple rewrites.”

(I can’t tell you how important her last sentence is.  If a publication requires many hours of editing and rewrites — and some do — your hourly rate plummets.  This is part of what we freelancers call the PIA factor.)

Knowing how quickly she can write also helps establishing whether or not an assignment makes sense.

“I know that I can write about 800 words an hour (after the research and interviews are completed), so I can figure out how much time it will take me to write an article of any length,” she says. “For example, many articles run at around 1,500 words, so this will take me about two hours.”

Depending on what the client is offering, this may or may not be a good deal.  Here’s an example:

You’ve been offered a 1,500-word story assignment for your local alt weekly newspaper.  They’re willing to pay you $0.35 per word, and you’ll need to do four phone interviews.  You estimate that those interviews will take about an hour each, and you think you can write the story in two hours.  You’ve worked with them before, so you know you can count on about 1 hour of editing. Is the assignment worth it?  Let’s look at the math.

1,500 x $0.35 = $525

So if you do the story, you’ll earn $525.

4 hours (for interviews) + 2 hours (for writing) + 1 hour (for editing) = 7 hours

So you can expect to spend about 6 hours on the story in all.  (Notice, though, that there’s no time allotted for research or back-and-forth with the editor.  And you haven’t included any of the time you spent convincing the editor to give you the assignment.)

$525 ÷ 7 hours = $75 per hour

Now, maybe that’s a good rate for you and maybe it’s not.  Regardless, you now have a solid idea of whether or not you should take the assignment.

(If you’re not self-employed, you may be surprised by this rate.  But remember we self-employed folks are responsible for all overhead — equipment, facilities, health insurance, vacation and sick leave, taxes and retirement savings.)

And this works in all sorts of careers, whether you’re an artisan or have a landscaping business.  The math takes the guesswork out of business planning.  And it can keep you on track in any new business venture that comes your way.

If you are attending the American Society for Journalists and Authors (ASJA) conference in New York in April, be sure to check out my panel on math and writing.  I and two panelists will talk about how math is important in reporting and running a freelance business.  I promise it won’t be boring — and you’ll probably learn how to be a better reporter and business owner.  (Psst: Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project is the luncheon speaker!)

Hey freelancers (of all kinds): what’s your favorite math tip for running your business?  Share it in the comments section.

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In Math at Work Monday

Math at Work Monday: Ron the web designer

Ron Doyle

Ron S. Doyle is both a web designer and a freelance writer.  In fact, he’s found a particular niche in developing web sites for other freelance writers.  He’s also got a wicked sense of humor and uses math in his work.

Can you explain what you do for a living?

The highfaluting answer: I help clients build or restructure their online presence through web development and design, business analysis, project management, strategic brand management, consultation and training.

The mundane answer: I make websites!

When do you use basic math in your job?

I use proportions, algebra and basic geometric concepts at work every day. Most of what I’m doing involves simple addition, counting pixels. For example, if a website’s main container is 960 pixels wide, I have to make sure that all the margins, padding, borders and boxes inside add up.

The Health*Conscious*Travel homepage above  is 960 pixels wide, but here’s what I see:

2px border + 21px padding + 1px border + 555px feature box + 1px border + 21px padding + 1px border +

334px subscribe box +1px border + 21px padding + 2px border = 960 pixels wide!

This basic addition turns into algebra when a client comes to me and says “I have this 300 pixel wide advertisement that must go here” or
“I want to embed this YouTube video there.” Then all the other elements become variables—and I change them to make everything balance with the ad or video.

It gets even more complicated when I start adding things like drop shadows or glowing edges to an object, which have a specific radius from the edge. A 3px drop shadow spreads 1.5 px past the edge of the object, etc.

Certain objects, like videos, also must appear in specific proportions, e.g., 16:9. For example, if I know I must fit a high-definition video into a space that’s 500 pixels wide, I know that the video will be a little more than 281 pixels tall.

16/9  =  500/x

16x  =  4,500

x  =  281.25

I also use proportions for my favorite design element: The Golden Ratio, 1: 1.618. It’s a proportion that naturally occurs in nature and is used widely in design and architecture. I agree with the ancient Greeks that it’s a beautiful shape and I try, whenever possible, to use it in my designs. Sometimes, it’s a fun little secret for me. For example, Ann Logue’s website doesn’t seem to have many boxes or rectangles at all:

But there are actually seven golden rectangles coded into the layout:

Do you use any technology (like calculators or computers) to help with this math? Why or why not?

I use paper to draw initial designs, a calculator to figure out proportions and design software like Adobe Creative Suite to help with measurements and placement of objects before I write any code. I suppose I could do it all while I’m writing the code, but I like to keep costs low for my clients—and I like going outside from time to time.

How do you think math helps you do your job better?

Math doesn’t just help me do my job better, it makes it possible.

How comfortable with math do you feel? 

None of this math feels uncomfortable to me. All web designers use math, whether they realize it or not, but some have a natural ability to see things like the golden proportion without picking up a calculator. I don’t know if I have that innate aesthetic skill—so the numbers make me feel more confident in my design decisions.

What kind of math did you take in high school? Did you like it/feel like you were good at it?

I didn’t develop a relationship with math until the seventh grade. That year, I had a great algebra teacher; things just clicked and I’ve loved mathematics ever since. I took Geometry, Algebra II, Trigonometry, PreCalculus and AP Calculus in high school. I always felt confident in math class, except Calculus; my teacher struggled teaching the subject and I had a bad case of graduation fever.

As a psychology major in college, I didn’t love research but I enjoyed the statistical part of the work (and I took Calculus for Engineers even though it wasn’t required). Before I started my current business, I was a high school teacher. Trigonometry was one of my favorite subjects to teach.

Did you have to learn new skills in order to do this math? Or was it something that you could pick up using the skills you learned in school?

School definitely helped me feel confident with math, but I learned the skills I use today from building things with my father when I was younger. I spent a lot of my childhood with a tape measure with my father rattling off fractions at me—I understood 5/8 and 3/4 and 9/16 on a visual level long before I learned them in school.

Everything else I learned from Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land:

Do you have questions for Ron?  If so, ask them in the comments section below.

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