Mindmap of Financial Intelligence
Here’s a mindmap I did to give you an overview of the book Financial Intelligence: A Manager’s Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean.
Download the pdf here.
Why is financial-literacy so important?
Sir Richard Branson, despite his many companies, did not know the difference gross and nett until he was 50, if you believe his interview at TED.
Some years ago, a simple financial-literacy test was given to directors of various Fortune 500 companies. They got an average of 32% of the questions right.
Why is financial-literacy so important?
According to Financial Intelligence: A Manager’s Guide to Knowing what the Numbers Really Mean, published by the Harvard Business School Press, there are at least 3 benefits to an individual:
- increased ability to critically evaluate your company
- better understanding of the bias in the numbers
- the ability to use numbers and financial tools to make and analyze decisions
now, if the words scare or bore you, you’re probably like me and might have described yourself in the past as “not a numbers person”. well, the good news is that the book is damm good, short and well-written. And i shall attempt to write a summary of what i have learnt over the next couple of posts.
let’s get it started
if you’re like me, you probably have a long list of things you want to learn. here’s a short selection of my wish-list:
- classical music appreciation
- photoshop mastery
- economics 101
- introduction to world history
- overview of philosophy
it’s a long list so i will spare you. well, my struggle with this blog is the same struggle with learning. so much to learn, so little time and where do i even start? what is best?
for 2008, i’m going to start afresh and keep it simple. i won’t even have a long-term plan. i’m not going to worry about the internet, podcasts, blogs, etc.
i am going to take it one book at a time. i am going to read a book and blog about it in many parts.
it’s the power of one. i shall just focused on one book and not worry about trying to “maximize” everything.
like i said before, it’s a journey here on ihadapooreducation.com and there will be lots of mistakes and revisions of mind.
so tomorrow, expect some writing on something that might help you at work. i am from a non-financial background so i was looking for a book to help me understand financial information.
the book is Financial Intelligence: A Manager’s Guide to Knowing what the Numbers Really Mean.
apologies
i am sorry i haven’t been writing.
but i remain poorly educated and passionate about writing here.
i still have many questions on how this website should be. i haven’t found my voice yet so you might find the entries rather disjointed and all over the place.
better than sitting still, i think.
free lecture on joseph conrad and graham greene
fans of both joseph conrad and graham greene might want to check out a free lecture organised by the national museum (16 Nov 2007, 7:30pm – 9pm).
from the event website:
This lecture will provide insights into the work of a fascinating literary detective writing the biographies of Conrad and Greene, illuminating how an understanding of history contributes to the understanding of the novelists and their works, and how challenges in the research process were met.
introducing ihadapooreducation.com
i just wrote the introduction for this website:
brijit - a time-saver for reading magazines
brijit can save you time by helping you decide what magazine article to read. it takes articles of magazines such as the Economist, Time and New Yorker and gives an abstract in 100 words or less.
here is a sample summary of a NYT article:
If you’ve enjoyed having your tech support outsourced to India, you’re going to love the next wave of globalization: consumer services. At $99 a month, Indian firm TutorVista offers unlimited tutoring using voice chat over the Internet, while personal assistant service Ask Sunday will order delivery from your favorite restaurant for you if you’re too busy to do it yourself. The global personal-assistance business is still in its infancy, but when you have college graduates like Ramya Tadikonda willing to tutor for $2 an hour, it’s unlikely the trend will die down. Lohr offers a fascinating look at the next wave of globalization.
brijit’s feed for their most popular articles is here.
national anthems without words
i did not know that spain has no lyrics to its anthem, although that may change soon.
other national anthems that are wordless include:
Afghanistan (1926-1943), Basque Country, Bosnia and Hercegovina (1998-), Egypt (1923-1960), Europe, Iraq (?-1959), Iraq (1959-1965, 2003-2004), Iraq (1965-1981), Italy (1862-1946), Kuwait (1961-1978), North Yemen (1962-1978), Ottoman Empire, Qatar (1954-1996), Russia (1991-2000), San Marino, Sealand, Somalia (1960-2000), Somaliland (1960), Srpska, United Federation of Planets, and Zanzibar.
Explaining the subprime mortgage crisis
John Mauldin, describes this article in Fortune, as “simply the best explanation of the current meltdown in the subprime market I have read anywhere”.
Thinking Through Writing
in today’s sunday times, janadas devan wrote about how his son was penalised by his teacher for writing an essay without a proper introduction and conclusion (the thesis-proof-conclusion model).
this model, while popular for 400 years, is not the only model and devan describes a good alternative - the writing of george orwell who “starts in medias res, in the middle of things, with an arresting incident, observation or fact.”
Orwellian writing:
‘Soon after I arrived at Crossgates… I began wetting my bed.’
How a delightful account of how his boarding-school days begins
‘In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people - the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.’
The first sentence of one of his most famous pieces, Shooting An Elephant, an account of his stint in the Imperial Police in Burma
‘As the corpse went past the flies left the restaurant table in a cloud and rushed after it, but they came back a few minutes later.’
The beginning of an essay on Marrakech
devan recommends Susan R. Horton’s Thinking Through Writing as “one of the most useful textbooks on expository writing” he has seen.