Tools of the Trade: Punching, Crunching, and

Tech Forum
powerOne™ Keypad and Worksheet
Punching,
Crunching, and
Publishing
Numbers
The basic calculator that
comes with the Palm OS is
very handy. It has nine
functions including math,
trig, finance, logic, statistics, and four kinds of
conversion calculators.
Sounds like a lot until you
look at Infinity Softworks’
powerOne™ Finance v3.0.
Designed for the Palm
OS-based handhelds
(including Palm, Handspring, Sony, and
Kyocera), the powerOne
Finance calculator offers
comparable functionality
to Hewlett-Packard’s line
of financial calculators,
including the HP 19B. It is
available in a downloadable version or as a
Springboard module for
The Handspring Module
58
S T R AT E G I C F I N A N C E
I
Handspring, and it features touch-screen user
interface, RPN and standard input, and color support. Financial analysis
includes advanced annuity, loan, and amortization
in the Time Value of
Money worksheet, cash
flows for Net Present Value, Internal Rate of
Return, Payback Modified
Internal Rate of Return,
price or yield of bonds,
Depreciation (Straightline, Declining Balance,
and Sum of Years), unit
and currency conversions,
percent change, markups
and markdowns, profit
margin, a Black-Scholes
option pricing worksheet,
and so on. There are 20
built-in worksheets and
more than 100 free additional ones at Infinity’s
website.
www.infinitysw.com.
There are times when
WYSIWYG seems to be a
sadistic joke. When the
text on the screen fragments and jumps to new
positions on the printed
page, it’s usually time to
March 2002
punt. With mathematical
notation, the joke can
become a nightmare. If
you need both text and
equations in your next
report, presentation, or
book, you need a mathematics word processor.
Scientific WorkPlace by
MacKichan Software, Inc.
is just that, but it also has
two computer algebra systems (MuPAD® 2.0 and
Maple V® 5.1) that will
evaluate, solve, simplify,
expand, or apply a universe of math functions
from fraction reduction to
plotting approximate integrals. The program will
also plot 2D and 3D
graphs with the tap of a
button. That’s the most
compelling feature of the
program—you input text
and math on the same
line, using the keys on the
keyboard and the buttons
on the screen for the math
formatting and symbols.
It’s all right on the screen,
and elements fit in where
they are told to go—they
don’t jump to the next
page in a new, very large
typeface. Your final documents can be set with or
without typesetting, you
can save and send them as
text or picture files, and
you can even post them
on the Web. There is a free
browser, called Scientific
Viewer®, for publishing
math online. Versions of
TeX and LaTeX are included for international typesetting, and there is an
Exam Builder for generating, grading, and recording quizzes on a Web
server for those in academic settings. More
information is available at
MacKichan’s website.
www.mackichan.com.
Scientific WorkPlace’s Push-button Environment
Two Books on
Numbers
Wiley’s release of the book
The Financial Numbers
Game: Detecting Creative
Accounting Practices by
Charles W. Mulford and
Eugene E. Comiskey was
set for the middle of February 2002. As chance
would have it, the release
coincided with what might
turn out to be one of the
nation’s largest financial
scandals, and there is an
introductory note at the
beginning of the book
referring the reader to
Chapters 8 (“Misreported
Assets and Liabilities”)
and 11 (“Problems with
Cash-flow Reporting”) for
some insights into Enron’s
problems. This is more
appropriate than opportunistic because the
authors use examples
throughout to illustrate
concepts. In fact, so many
companies are referenced,
there is a separate index of
companies. The kinds of
“creative accounting practices” covered in the book
include aggressive
accounting, earnings management, income smoothing, and fraudulent
financial reporting. The
authors’ purpose is “to
equip the financial statement reader to better
detect the use of creative
accounting practices and
avoid equity-investment
and credit-granting mistakes.” A book for its
times. The John Wiley&
Sons, Inc. site is at
www.wiley.com.
The Internet Revolution—
Dot.gone? Michael Castelluccio, Editor
■ THERE SEEMS TO BE SOME CONFUSION. The
Internet bubble that recently burst in a dramatic illusion
vs. reality reduction was the one gassed up on Wall
Street, a place that recently has sprung some serious
leaks of its own concerning the reliability of its information. The Internet revolution, on the other hand, continues to motor along at an accelerating pace, looking
more inevitable every day.
The Brookings Institution has published a small book
of numbers and explanations that tells why the network
continues to shape our economy and quality of life. The
book is Beyond the Dot.coms—The Economic Promise
of the Internet, and it was written by the director of Eco-
The Ernst & Young Tax
Guide 2002 from John
Wiley & Sons covers all of
the sweeping changes of
the Economic Growth and
nomic Studies, Robert E. Litan, and Alice M. Rivlin,
senior fellow in the Economics Studies program. The
authors describe the Internet revolution as “likely to be
positive, significant, and sustained.”
Some Kind of Gauge
Taking nothing for granted, the book begins with the
question, “Is the Internet a big deal?” In the answer,
the authors present a central thesis that appears
throughout the study. Stated simply, it is the gains in
productivity created by the Internet that will improve the
economy and also our standard of living. And the Internet can improve productivity in a number of ways: by
providing better tools to workers, by improving workers'
skills, and with organizational or management breakthroughs. Examples come to mind from across a wide
spectrum—time and expenses reported online, open
Tax Relief Reconciliation
Act of 2001. It has more
than 450 of its usual features, (Tax Savers, Tax
Planners, Tax Alerts, and
Tax Organizers), a special
chapter on mutual funds,
50 of the most commonly
overlooked deductions,
tax forms and schedules
you can use, step-by-step
instructions, and where to
look for online help.
www.wiley.com
auctions for raw materials, tracking and scheduling for
truck deliveries, papers presented online for physicians
around the world, stock trading, and other financial
transactions. One of the Internet's most powerful offerings, e-mail (and by extension, instant messaging), has
made a drastic change in the way we communicate.
But how do you measure the changes in productivity? The answers in Beyond the Dot.coms are the result
of the combined research of a group of experts put
together by the Institute in its Brookings Task Force on
the Internet. Sectors of the economy that were represented include education, financial services, governcontinued on next page
March 2002
I
S T R AT E G I C F I N A N C E
59