We’re rounding out our month of nesting today and Wednesday. What’s cozier than a cup of hot coffee? If you’ve ever wondered where your morning cup of Joe comes from, meet John Curry, owner of Buona Caffe, an artisan coffee roaster.
Can you explain what you do for a living?
I roast and sell specialty coffee.
When do you use basic math in your job?
I use math to figure out how much coffee I need to roast for our orders. When coffee is roasted, it loses about 18% of its weight. I have to take that into account in my calculations. On my blends, I have to calculate proportions of coffees, whether it’s for a 12-ounce retail bag or a 5-pound bag for a restaurant. We also use math for brewing coffee – different brewing methods require different amounts of grounds and ratios to water.
We have to consider shipping weights when we order green coffee beans. And I use basic math for running the business – tracking sales and outstanding invoices, forecasting sales, that kind of thing.
I use math is just about every aspect of roasting and selling coffee. Math is a very important part of running your own business. Money is all numbers!
Do you use any technology to help with this math?
Yes. I use a calculator to do proportions for blends. Accuracy is very important.
How do you think math helps you do your job better?
Without it, I couldn’t be sure of any of my measurements. Since we sell a food product, it’s very important that our product weighs what the label says it weighs and that our proportions are accurate. If we don’t do the right math every time, our coffee won’t taste as good as it should!
Upperline
How comfortable with math do you feel?
I feel relatively comfortable with math all the time. I use it with hobbies as well, such as woodworking. I also use math with spreadsheets.
What kind of math did you take in high school?
That was a long time ago! I know I took geometry. I didn’t take any higher level math. I did not like math, and I was not good at it. I was better at geometry than other kinds of math. I feel more comfortable with math now than I did then.
Did you have to learn new skills to do this math?
I didn’t have to learn new skills to do this math. I do a lot of percentages and ratios.
So what are your big questions about roasting coffee? Ask John!
If you celebrate Christmas and live in America, you may very well be heading out (or coming home) from Black Friday sales. Or perhaps you’re opting for Small Business Saturday, picking up gifts at local specialty stores. Or maybe you’re waiting until early next week for Cyber Monday–and big shopping spree at Amazon or Etsy. Or you may be waiting for the local arts and crafts show to fill your stockings (or at least shopping basket).
Whatever your preference, you may be wondering how artists and crafters price their items. Well, I can tell you from experience that the process is a really big challenge. When I decided to sell some little items that I sew, I spent a long time researching and doing the math to find the perfect Three-Bears price — you know: not too high and not too low, but juuust right.
But I can’t say it better than Somer Sherwood, a wonderful free-form crocheter, who sells her amazing creations in her Etsy shop, Classy Broad. Somer also blogs at www.somersherwood.com, and she gave me permission to share this excerpt of her wonderful post: “The True Cost of Handmade.” Read on:
I recently did my first craft fair. And at that craft fair, one woman picked up every one of my hats, tried them on, and made a sort of a noise in the back of her throat indicating disgust. Then she muttered, “I don’t really like these hats” before looking at the price tag for one of them and looking at me over her glasses: “Do you really charge this much?”
Ok, I managed a retail store for many years, so I’m used to this type of customer. I’ve met hundreds of them, and I know it’s less about whatever she is looking at and more about what is going on in her own crazy brain. Some people just have this need to be nasty. But this was a little different. What she was cruelly and callously saying to me was that what I created had no value. My art has no value. It is worthless and ugly. And I won’t lie — it stung a little.
But back to her question about the cost. The particular hat she picked up was $150 and it was this one:
The offending freeform crochet hat: Lettuce Go to the Mothership. $150.
You can’t see from the photos, but it is made of thousands of tiny little stitches, all folding in on themselves and creating a pretty elaborate underwater sea creature type effect. It’s made of hundreds of yards of very nice wool in colors that I carefully selected and put together in a way I thought would be pleasing. I spent probably 18 to 20 hours making this hat.
So let’s do the math.
Read the rest here. It’s seriously worth it — especially if you sometimes question the values put on those adorable, amazing and one-of-a-kind items that are only available from your friendly crafters and artists.
I’m taking it easy this week (ahhh!), and so I’ve brought you an excerpt from my book Math for Grownups. (Check it out for more great ideas on using math in your everyday life.) Happy Thanksgiving!
As any experienced cook will tell you, timing is often the most difficult skill to master in the kitchen. Nobody wants to sit down to a meal of overdone fish, cold broccoli, and room-temperature biscuits. (The butter should melt into the flaky layers, you know?)
Figuring out how long a dish should bake, roast, or boil is the first step to presenting a carefully choreographed dinner. And for many novice or not-so-frequent home chefs, a giant turkey is the most daunting of all entrées.
Sure, you can count on the pop-up timer. These come with some turkeys, or you can buy one separately. But you’ll still need to know when to put the bird in the oven—and when to start boiling the potatoes.
And there’s also the thawing time. Buying a frozen turkey means allowing time for it to defrost, which is probably a lot longer than you think!
But you don’t need Julia Child or a semester at Le Cordon Bleu to figure any of this out. Thawing times and cooking times depend on the turkey’s weight.
It’s your first Thanksgiving with your new husband, Tom. And your mother-in-law will arrive just in time for the 6:00 P.M. dinner. She’s bringing pecan pie, stuffing, and homemade rolls. You’re in charge of all the rest—including the turkey. You’ve ordered a 12-pound bird, which you’ll need to thaw in the fridge before roasting. When should you pull it out of the deep freeze?
You know from your sister’s horror stories that you can’t cut corners by thawing the bird on the counter. Unless you want to host the Thanksgiving-dinner-when-everyone-got-Salmonella, your best bet is to defrost the turkey in the refrigerator. The United States Department of Agriculture(USDA) says to allow 5 hours of thawing time per pound. They oughta know, right?
You’ve bought a 12-pound turkey. How long should you allow for thawing?
It’s a simple problem, really. Just multiply the number of pounds by 5—the number of hours needed to thaw each pound.
12 x 5 = 60
So you need to put the turkey in the fridge for 60 hours in order to thaw it. But let’s think a moment. Does this mean 60 hours before dinner is served? Nope. The USDA also says that serving raw poultry is a big no-no, so you’ll also need to roast the bird.
If your oven is set to 325ºF, the USDA recommends roasting an unstuffed turkey for 2¾ to 3 hours. They’re the experts on avoiding food-borne illnesses, so you decide to follow their recommendations.
With a little time for resting—the turkey, not you—and carving, you estimate that it will take 3 to 3¼ hours to get the bird from the fridge to the table. You’ll need to add that to the thawing time in order to figure out when to pull the turkey out of the freezer.
60 + 3¼ = 63¼ hours
Clearly you’ll need more than a day, but how much more? There are 24 hours in a day. How many 24s are there in 63¼? You can use a calculator, but that could be confusing. Instead, try some mental math.
To make things easier, forget about the extra ¼ hour (or 15 minutes). You can add that on to the end. Working with whole numbers is much easier.
It looks like you’ll need at least 2 days. That’s because 24 times 2 is 48, which is less than the total time you have figured out. Will you need a third day? You can subtract to find out.
63 – 48 = 15
So 2 days and 15 hours (plus the extra 15 minutes) ought to do it. But that doesn’t tell you whattime to start defrosting the turkey, does it?
Remember, your dinner starts at 6:00 P.M. Fifteen hours before that is 3:00 A.M., and another 15 minutes before that is 2:45 A.M. So you will have to take the turkey out of the freezer at 2:45 A.M. on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
Because you’re doing all the cooking, you decide to let Tom get up to move the turkey from the freezer to the fridge. You set his alarm on Monday night and settle in for the last good night’s sleep of the week.
Do you have any Thanksgiving cooking horrors to share? Do tell (in the comments section)!
Ever have one of those weeks? That was me last week. I just couldn’t get my act together, and before I knew it, it was the weekend, and I had struck out — for the first time — on getting a compelling and interesting Math at Work Monday interview.
Shucks.
Then I remembered: I’m so blessed to have wonderful things in life, including a great archive of amazing Math at Work Monday interviews. And I’m betting many of you haven’t read them all.
So, I’m celebrating Thanksgiving a little early this year. Taking it a little easy. Counting my blessings rather than my shortcomings. Please enjoy some of my favorite Math at Work Monday interviews. I’m so thankful for everyone who has shared their experience and insight with everyone in the Math for Grownups family!
Alison the Shop Owner: As you’re gearing up for holiday shopping, check out how shop owners make buying decisions.
Come back on Wednesday, when I’ll publish a special excerpt from my book — and get the scoop on how to time Thanksgiving dinner so everything ends up on the table, hot and perfectly cooked!
Curtains are the ultimate nesting project. Not only do they finish off a room, but they keep out drafts and provide privacy. And lined curtains are even cozier. Making curtains is not as hard as it may seem. If I can do it, so can you — I promise. All it takes is some skill in measuring, a good plan and the ability to sew a straight line.
Most curtain panels are just rectangles. So you need to know two things: the width and the height of the panel that you’ll be making. And that means knowing a little bit about the measurements of your window.
For these kinds of projects, I always count on a trusty diagram. I don’t pull out the graph paper — any scrap will do. The key is to measure carefully.
I have three windows that I’ll be covering, but they’re all the same size and shape — so one drawing would do it. My goal was to determine the height and width of the finished curtains. Then I could take those dimensions to figure out how much fabric to cut.
(Yes, that’s a giant coffee stain. It was Saturday morning — early. But I didn’t get the coffee on anything else.)
I wanted floor-length curtains, so I measured from the top of the curtain rod (or where that rod would be) to the floor. Then I needed to take into consideration the curtain rings. I’m lazy — give me a break, lined curtains are enough work! — so I chose to use clip-on curtain rings. (In my drawing, those are the little circle things at the top of the window.) That added about 2″ to the hardware at the top of the curtains, but meant I wouldn’t need to sew tab tops or button holes or a pocket for a curtain rod. (Besides I like the look.)
The measurement from the floor to the top of the rod is 92″, so the finished curtain panel would need to be 90″. (92″ – 2″ = 90″)
Now for the width. There is all sorts of advice for this measurement, but most sources say to make a curtain panel like I was planning, each one should at least 1.5 to 2 times as wide as the window itself.
But threw that advice out of the window. As I described on my guest post for Harmony Art on Wednesday, I felt the design of the fabric was strong enough that I didn’t need more than around 34″ for each panel width. This had another benefit: because the fabric I was using was 110″ long, I only needed one yard of fabric per panel.
(Did you see what I just did there? I broke the rules! Being a grown up is really freeing.)
So, now I had my finished fabric width and length, but that’s not how much fabric I would cut. Nope, I have to consider the hems, unless I was okay with frayed edges. (I’m not.) And that required a second diagram.
Notice that there are two rectangles here: The larger one is for my curtain fabric. The smaller one represents the lining.
Basically, I have two rectangles here. The larger one is my curtain fabric. The smaller one is my lining. If you think of this diagram as looking at the back of the curtain, that will make sense.
The ultimate goal was to figure out how much fabric I needed to cut — based on the finished size of the curtain panel. So what I ended up doing is adding to the finished panel size. Here’s the basic formula for the length:
top hem + finished panel + bottom hem
For my design, that meant:
5″ + 90″ + 5″ = 100″
(Ignore the 7″ measurements at the bottom of the drawing. They should have read 5″.)
Same goes for the sides:
left hem + finished panel + right hem
1″ + 34″ + 1″ = 36″
Ta-da! I now know what size to cut my curtain fabric: 100″ x 36″
The lining is a bit different. I want the top edge of the lining to line up with the curtain fabric. This way, the top of the curtain is sturdy enough for the curtain clips. But the sides should be smaller, to allow for the little “frame” of curtain fabric all the way around. An added benefit is that I don’t have to hem the lining fabric at all — the rough edges will just tuck inside the curtain fabric hem.
Lining length: 100″ – 2″ = 98″
Lining width: 36″ – 1″ – 1″ = 34″
If I’ve done my math correctly, the only thing left to do is cut, iron and sew!
This is the lining pinned to the curtain fabric. (The top doesn’t match up perfectly because of the selvedge, or manufactured edge, of the curtain fabric.)
Starting the top hem of the curtain (upside-down). First I fold the rough edge over and iron.
… Then I fold over to tuck in the rough edges of the fabric and make the finished hem.
After a few hours of cutting and ironing and ironing and ironing and sewing and ironing, I finally had two finished curtain panels:
So I’m already looking at my mistakes. This weekend I’m going to revisit at that right panel, which seems a bit long. I’ll probably take out the top hem and re-do it.
The diagrams made all the difference in the world with this project. Without them, I would have had a terrible time visualizing what I needed. And honestly, that little bit of math was much easier than the sewing (and ironing and ironing and ironing and ironing).
When have you used a diagram to help you solve a problem or complete a project? Share your experience in the comment section!
So you’re buying fabric for a project. Whether you’re doing the sewing yourself or sending it out to a professional seamstress, tailor or upholsterer, the width of the textile is a big consideration.
Fabric is typically sold by the yard, and it’s manufactured in standard widths, usually ranging from 40 inches to 110 inches. The wider the material, the more area you’ll actually take home per yard. (There’s more to consider here, including the way the pattern runs and the grain of the fabric. But we’ll save those details for another post.)
Naturally, wider fabric also sports a higher price tag per yard. And doing the math can help you figure out if it’s a good deal or not. That’s why textile designer Harmony Susalla asked me to write a guest post for her blog. A snippet appears below. Read the rest on Harmony’s site.
When you’re a complete fabric junkie like I am, you’re always looking for a bargain. Of course, my eye is drawn to gorgeous designer fabrics with really high thread count. Swoon! But the cost—well, that can bring on a real fainting spell.
That’s why I started out sewing with fat quarters. I found fabrics that I loved—and could easily afford—and figured out really cool things I could make with them. Little, zippered change purses, box-bags for balls of yarn and knitting needle rolls. I sewed and sewed and sewed. And I was very happy.
Until I started eyeing my bare windows and mismatched sofa and side chairs. If I could make all of those little things, I could make big things—like curtains and slipcovers—too.
But cotton fabrics are generally 40”, 54”, 60” or 72” wide. And that meant I was buying alot of fabric.
That’s when I met decorator fabrics. And then I found HarmonyArt. These babies come in 110” widths—plenty wide for the 98” long drapes I had planned. And you can’t deny that Harmony’s designs are gorgeous. Perfect for curtains, tablecloths, slipcovers, and heck, if I quilted, even quilts!
The prices were much higher though.
Click over to Harmony’s blog to read the rest. And come back on Friday to get the scoop on my latest sewing project–new curtains for my living room, using Harmony’s fabric. Meantime, share your experiences using math in the sewing room. What kind of math have you had to use to complete a sewing project? Share your story in the comments section.
(Harmony and I organized a barter for this guest post; she sent me one yard of her Evelyn fabric in exchange for the post.)
You may not know this about me yet, but I’m a fabric junkie. In fact, when I finished my book last winter, my reward was a day-trip to New York City to shop at Mood Designer Fabrics. I need rehab.
So when Harmony Susalla contacted me to ask if I’d do a guest post on her blog, I jumped at the chance — and I asked her to do an interview with me. Harmony is a wonderful textile designer, who works in organic cotton.
Can you explain what you do for a living?
As a textile designer I create patterns and designs that are printed on fabrics. Since 2005, I have owned my own organic-cotton fabric company.
When do you use basic math in your job?
For a design to be printable using rotary screens, the design has to fit a particular circumference of the screens. Typically the circumferences are 25.25″ or 36″. So I use division on a regular basis because I need the repeat of the design to fit into a number that is divisible into the circumference size. For example: If I am using a 36″ screen then, depending on the size of the motifs, the repeat may end up being 18″ or 12″ or 9″ or 6″ or 4.5″ — or even smaller — but it must be a factor of 36.
I remember quite a few years ago I was working for a design firm and we had to do a diagonal stripe that repeated. I was doing it the hard way, meaning I would make manual adjustments, test, readjust, and test again until it eventually worked out. My colleague and friend at the time, Freya, went home and came back the next day with a formula. I was VERY impressed and still have that piece of paper with the formula on it. I still reference it. But it helped me to realize that with the use of basic math skills, I could save a lot of time and effort in my work, and ensure the quality of the final design.
Also, as a small business owner, I am constantly using math to calculate charges, create order estimates, figure out cost and profit margins, determine MSRPs (manufacturer’s suggested retail price), etc.
Do you use any technology to help with this math?
Just last week, I made a spreadsheet of all of the various repeat sizes for the 25.25″ screen size. One of my customers sent me a design she wanted printed, but the design was not created in an appropriate repeat size. I had to use the list I created in Excel to find the closest repeat-size option for her design and make the necessary adjustments.
I use QuickBooks to generate invoices which does basic multiplication and addition for me. I also use Excel on a fairly regular basis.
These are only a few of Harmony’s designs. (Photo courtesy of Harmony Susalla.)
How comfortable with math do you feel?
On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d rate myself a 5. I am really comfortable with simple math. Work math seems natural. I actually really enjoy having math I learned in school apply to my daily life. So much of our formal education is forgotten because we just don’t use it, but I get to use math on a daily basis.
What kind of math did you take in high school?
In high school, I was always in the advanced math classes. My senior year, I was placed in calculus. Until that point, math had been pretty easy for me, but suddenly I was lost. I think I lasted about 2 weeks before I dropped the class. It was the first time I can remember truly feeling “stupid.” I was then placed in regular senior math, and it was so easy that I was held after class by my teacher who believed I had an attitude problem. While the teacher would go over homework from the day before I would be working on the current night’s homework. I would finish before class was over, and then stare out the window (because I didn’t need help). This was the behavior that convinced her I had an attitude problem. After that, I had to pretend to be paying attention to the lesson being taught, even though it was material I already knew.
Did you have to learn new skills in order to do the math you use today?
This is a good question. I think that most of the math I use today I learned in school, with the exception of some of the accounting terminology and applications that were new to me. But because I had a good base in math, it was relatively easy to learn on my own.
This entire week will be devoted to fabrics. Come back on Wednesday to see what I wrote for Harmony’s blog. On Friday, I’ll show you how I made some gorgeous curtains for my new living room out of Harmony’s Evelyn print.
In the meantime, post your questions for Harmony here. She’s happy to respond!
You’ve heard the spiel: spending money to make your house more energy efficient can help you save big bucks. But is it true? How much can you really save by adding a programmable thermostat or weatherstripping windows? Or are these just tricks by manufacturers to make you purchase their products? A little bit of math can help you find out.
Carly has been living in her first home for two years. She’s paid attention to her energy bills and notices that she spends $250 each month to heat her house in the winter. Where she lives, that’s about 5 months of the year.
That means she’s spending $250 x 5 or $1,250 each year on heating costs.
She’s got three projects on her mind: installing a programmable thermostat, weatherstripping windows and lowering the thermostat on her water heater. If she does this work, how much money can she expect to save? Let’s take a look.
1. Installing a programmable thermostat: The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that you can expect to save 10% on heating costs each year by turning the thermostat back by 10 to 15 degrees for 8 hours each day. And the easiest way to do this is by installing a programmable thermostat.
Pretty quickly, Carly figures out that she can save $125 each year. Here’s how:
10% of $1,250
0.10 x 1,250 = $125
The programmable thermostat that Carly has been eyeing costs $47, and she’s decided to install it herself (the instructions don’t seem too tough at all). So, this year she can expect to save:
$125 – $47 = $78.
Photo courtesy of oksidor
2. Weatherstripping windows: It’s a real pain, but Carly is wondering if weatherstripping and caulking her windows can help keep some cash in her pocket. Again, she consults the U.S. Department of Energy, which estimates that drafty windows can cause energy efficiency to dip by 5% to 30%. Playing it cautious, Carly estimates a 5% savings:
5% of 1,250
0.05 x 1,250 = $62.50
She figures she’ll need 3 tubes of caulk at $2.50 each, plus weatherstripping materials at $55.00:
(3 x $2.50) + $55
$7.50+ $55 = $62.50
Huh. She’s not saving anything by weatherstripping.
$62.50 – $62.50 = $0
But if she does the work this year, she can probably avoid it next year — keeping that entire $62.50 in the bank.
3. Turning down the water heater: According to Carly, there’s nothing better than a hot shower. But she’s willing to sacrifice that luxury, in order to save some money. Right now, her water heater is set at 130 degrees. But if she lowers it to 120 degrees, she can save about 4% in energy costs.
4% of 1,250
0.04 x 1,250 = $50
And lowering the thermostat on her water heater doesn’t cost a thing.
So with these three changes, what can Carly expect to save this year?
$78 + $0 + $50 = $128
That’s not a lot of cash. But what about the following year? Assuming she won’t have to reapply any weatherstripping, Carly’s looking at:
$125 + $62.50 + $50 = $237.50
Sounds worth it to me!
What do you think? Is all of this work worth the savings that Carly expects? What other considerations (or variables) should she consider? Would you approach this question differently?
Like most home-improvement projects, figuring out the size radiators that you’ll need for a room hinges on a formula — actually several formulas. Install radiators that are too large, and you’ll burn up. Too tiny radiators? You’ll need that Snuggie that your Aunt Myrtle gave you for your birthday last year. And those formulas depend on variables.
What’s a variable you say? Let me explain.
For all you English majors out there, pay attention to the root: vary. Yep, variables are things that vary or change. So in a formula, the variables are those little letters. And in many formulas — like the ones needed to calculate the number and size of the radiators in your house — there are lots of little letters.
What are the variables that your radiator technician depends on?
Think about the rooms in your house — some are small and some are large. In other words the size of the rooms vary. And any good radiator guy — like our friend Frank — will tell you that the size of a room determines the size of the radiator you need. Small room? Small radiator. Huge room? Probably more than one good-sized radiator.
So, guess what? Your old friend the volume formula plays a role.
V = lwh
where V = volume, l = length, w = width and h = height
(See those variables? Length, width, height? They’re pretty simple to figure out in a room with rectangular walls, floor and ceiling.)
But there are more variables to consider. Typically, you want your bedroom and hallways to be a little cooler than your kitchen and family room. So the kind of room that you’re heating will be another variable.
And rooms with lots of windows and doors — or houses with poor insulation — will lose more heat. Yep, more variables to consider.
Things are getting pretty darned complicated around here.
This is why most radiator technicians often use an online or computer program calculator to determine the size of the radiators needed for each room of a house.
But if you’re renovating an old house, like I am (and your name isn’t Bob Vila), you won’t likely need to find the BTU/hr needed to heat your dining room or the size of the radiator you need for your newly restored downstairs powder room. But knowing a little bit about the math that goes into the process can help you feel confident about the work your radiator guy is doing.
Besides, thinking of radiator heat is a good way to describe variables. Especially in November.
When have you used variables to work out a home-improvement problem? Share your ideas in the comments section.
This Forever 21 shirt is no longer available. (Thank goodness!)
Forever 21 and J.C. Penny had problems with moms and teen girls, when they retailed their own versions of math-as-gender-warfare–t-shirts that read: Allergic to Algebra and I’m Too Pretty for Homework, So My Brother Does It for Me. Within days, the shirts disappeared from the shelves and their websites.
I wrote a guest blog post about this for Dara Chadwick’s wonderful blog You’d Be So Pretty If, which is devoted to encouraging positive body image in girls.
I was a great high school student. I did well in all of my classes (Okay, so I did fail band that one grading period because I didn’t turn in my practice sheets.). I was a responsible and eager student. But there was one subject that was a challenge for me: French.
I tried. I really did. But for whatever reason, the most romantic of all of the romance languages did not come easy. I had good teachers. I studied. I paid attention in class. But the best I could do was a low B — and that was with a lot of hard work.
Still, I didn’t have a t-shirt that read, “French Phobic.” I’ve never heard of a Barbie doll that says, “French is Hard!”
So what’s the deal with math?
Math is hard. But so is writing, reading, playing an instrument, painting, soccer, woodshop and, yes, French. In fact, if teachers and coaches are doing their jobs, students will feel challenged — which can bring up a variety of other feelings, from frustration to enthusiasm.
You’d Be So Pretty If… by Dara Chadwick.
Read the rest here, and be sure to comment. Also, check our Dara’s wonderful book You’d Be So Pretty If…Anyone who knows a teenage girl should!
So what do you think about these t-shirts? Are they all in fun or bad for girls? Why does math get such a bad rap? Share your ideas in the comments section.
Let’s face it. We take our heat for granted. Unless you’ve been without heat for long enough that the charm of it all wears off, you just plain don’t notice that your house is toasty warm. And if you have radiators, you can thank “the radiator guy” for that.
I’ve always lived in old house. (Well, except for those years right after college when I rented circa-1970s townhouses.) And that means I’ve depended on radiators to keep me warm in winter months. I love radiators. Giving up some wall space is worth the even, constant heat. But until I started renovating my current house, I didn’t understand the calculations required to plan for the right size and number of radiators in a room.
Along came Frank “Steamhead” Wilsey — who has been our “radiator guy” since we moved to Baltimore. He may not like math, but he does use it in his job.
I use math for many things–accounting, invoicing, heat-loss calculations, radiator sizes and total amounts, flow rates, pressure drops, pipe and pump sizes and capacities. They’re almost all basic arithmetic- addition, subtraction, multiplication, division.
Do you use any technology to help with this math?
Yes, we use calculators and computers for a good part of it. Accounting and heat-loss calculationprograms save a lot of time, since they store a lot of things we commonly use so we don’t have to memorize them or look them up every time- such as heat transmission factors for various building materials and combinations thereof. Other things, like pump performance curves and oil burner nozzle capacities at different pressures are shown in charts that we keep with us.
These technologies help us work faster and more accurately. For example, most times our accountant doesn’t even have to come to our office- we just e-mail her the proper file. But we try to do the basic stuff in our heads, so we don’t lost the ability.
How do you think math helps you do your job better?
It helps us avoid guessing. It’s way too easy to guess wrong!
How comfortable with math do you feel?
I’ve never really been comfortable with math, but it’s part of my toolkit.
What kind of math did you take in high school?
I took some algebra, consumer math and I think some business types of math. Again, it wasn’t my best subject.
Did you have to learn new skills in order to do this math?
Mostly, I had to re-discover things that I forgot I’d learned in school.
So there you go. The simple quest of warmth requires some kind of math. Have questions for Frank? Ask them in the comments section. And stay tuned to Math for Grownups for more about the math involved in winter heating.
It’s November, which means it’s time for me to start thinking about the upcoming holidays. I love to buy gifts, but I hate to shop. So I spend a lot of time thinking about what I want to buy and only a little bit of time in the shops that I love.
Like A. Dodson’s. Shopping at locally-owned stores is a priority of mine. I like supporting small businesses and keeping my money local. Plus, so many local shops have quirky, carefully-selected merchandise that appeals to me. It’s like Etsy offline.
So I’m so excited to have Alison Dodson Anderson, proprietor of A. Dodson’s in Suffolk, Virginia. She’s the head honcho over there and uses math to run the business–and make sure that picky shoppers like me see something they want to buy.
I use math every. single. day! Although managing the creative aspects of A. Dodson’s feeds my soul, running the numbers and tracking our growth is something I am constantly doing. I use multiplication, percentages and basic business math to determine how much to price an item, how many items to order and to calculate my margins. There is a strategy behind every move we make and that strategy is created using math.
Do you use any technology to help with this math?
I do a lot in my head, but for data entry I rely on the computer to calculate margins not only on each product but within each department like accessories, gifts, apparel and home.
How do you think math helps you do your job better?
It helps me track what’s being sold, it helps me know my “open to buy” for next season, it helps me see my best sellers and know whether to buy 24 or 48 for next season.
It also helps my employees know what’s expected of them. Each day we review the numbers. We look at what the shop earned on that particular day for the last three years and then we establish a Goal and a Stretch for the day. The goal is generally a 10% increase over the year before and the Stretch is generally a 20% increase over the year before. At the end of each day, we post our numbers so we can see how we did. Additionally, each week we have a staff meeting to review our month-to-date and year-to-date performance. I believe everyone on staff, including the interns, should know exactly where we stand so they can feel empowered.
How comfortable with math do you feel?
I used to think I was a “math person,” but then I married a financial advisor. Compared to the math he can do so effortlessly, I don’t feel as much like a math person as I did. But I am completely comfortable with performing the kind of math that helps me run a successful business. Although creativity feeds my soul, math drives it!
What kind of math did you take in high school?
I took geometry, trigonometry, algebra and calculus. I was good at it, and I enjoyed learning it.
Did you have to learn new skills in order to do the math you use in your job?
My math foundation was earned at school, but I’ve learned how to use specific math skills to operate my business. For example, I may not have specifically learned in school that I must operate at XYZ margin in order to grow my business, but I learned in school the math required to calculate my margins.
If you are going to operate a retail business, you must know your numbers inside and out. You must always be running your numbers when you’re buying and when you’re selling. When I’m buying from a vendor, I’m looking at shipping costs and incentives because every little thing affects my margin and determines my resale, which ultimately determines A. Dodson’s success.
If you’re in the Hampton Roads area this weekend, be sure to stop by A. Dodson’s for their annual holiday open house. And if you have questions for Alison, ask them in the comments section!
