Good at Numbers

When a colleague asked me if I could analyze some data as part of a research project, I responded, “Of course I can, it’s just numbers.” My dad was the Assistant Manager of the local A & P store. From the time when I was a little boy, I could remember watching him at work. “What are you doing?” “Numbers…” Now he had no formal training for this. At the time of his youth, his immigrant parents decided to send his brother, the oldest of six boys, to college where he learned to play the saxophone and later while he worked as a house painter he also had a band that played at weddings and family gatherings. When I asked my Dad where he learned to be a bookkeeper, he always replied the same way: “Anybody can do this. It’s just numbers.”