Similar issues arise in finance. I started as a stock analyst in 1981 at a fairly elite firm (PaineWebber, usually top 5 and always top 10 in the equity resear

Similar issues arise in finance. I started as a stock analyst in 1981 at a fairly elite firm (PaineWebber, usually top 5 and always top 10 in the equity research rankings). We didn't get computers and spreadsheets -- Visicalc! -- until I'd been there a few months. After a while I started publishing annual growth rates, based on formulas like (EndValue/StartValue) ^ (1/5) - 1, formatted in percent. Multiple colleagues asked me to teach them this amazing trick. And by the way -- when writing this comment, I made a mistake in the formula above until I rechecked my work. :)