HOOOOOORRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY! Daughter Fran's going to Athens to compete for the GB team in the Paralympics in September. Bloody well done girl!! Your adoring Dad DW

Just applied for a job: won't say for what or where since it could scupper my chances; but see if you agree with me that their thanks for applying message could be a tad more friendly and reassuring. First the original then my initial suggestion for change. Thank you for your application for a position with ... We regret that owing to the volume of applications, we will be contacting only applicants short-listed for an interview. The selection process may take up to three months to be completed and no information on applications will be released during this period. However we advise you to check the status of the selection process on our website at the following address ... Why not try something like this instead? Thank you for your application for a position with ... Successful candidates will be invited to attend an interview; but please be patient because our selection processes can take up to three months to complete. Please note that no information on applications will be released; but you can check the status of the selection process on our website at the following address: DW

Dave wrote this: I was reading the combinations/permutations area of your web page and have a query. You mention that if a bank was allocating 4 digit pins then the number of possible pin numbers would be 5040. I don't understand why. If they can have 0000,0001.....9999, then why are there not 10,000 possible numbers? i.e. 9999 + 1 for 0000 any help would be great cheers dave Good question Dave that shows that I didn't explain that bit of that page fully, so I added a couple of examples to help out. Take a look at my Permutations and Combinations page to see the improvements I made. Thanks for helping out, Dave. DW

A problem that arises once a month or so is that someone writes to me with a question or other request which I deal with only to find that the email address they gave me doesn't work. Come on down OEMKY! Oemky wrote to ask for a spreadsheet but when I sent it, whoosh it came back. In case the in box was full at the other end I wrote again to ask them to empty their in box or provide an alternative address but whoosh that came back too. Please provide a valid email address for all replies, please. DW

Another unsolicited testimonial came in from a satisfied customer yesterday evening. Jerry said: Thank you! What more do I need to say! I have been in test engineering for years now and have been dodging to learn statistical maths for along time now! I have worked with various maths including differential equations and some FFT equations. My previous company was low volume wafer (Research and only program managers who tried to save their programs would do statistical maths) I could simply depend on trouble shooting on a real time bases, one by one real time failures. Now that I am in the Market, Test Engineers like myself have to know statistical maths and bell curve troubleshooting. Even though I could make an argument that they need to depend on common logic (circuit debugging and practical knowledge) for failure analysis. Test engineers in today's world need to analyze failure by measured percentages and how to rectify the numbers. I give in and here is my thanks to you. After reading the simple version on Mr. Niles I ran across your web site and found your problems. Ye old familiar symbol of sigma and found the maths not to complex. It seemed very similar in averaging Impedances in complex conjugates. Anyhow I simulated my own data sets of Currents for applied voltages of VBEE simulating some failures and BAM. I am ready to trouble shoot in series now. Just wanted to thank you for easy explanation. Aw, I've come over all embarrassed and shy! DW

Another gap in my literary ambitions. Here are a couple of things, though. Firstly, yesterday was sunny and fairly warm so I was able to tart up part of the garden. Then it lashed it down and I felt happy that I'd beaten the weather. Today was very wet again, which is just about par for a British Bank Holiday, as was today. Then the sun came out late in the afternoon. At which juncture I took to draining the hot water tank since it has been dripping for too long and I was living in fear of it leading to damp in the living room. Done and dusted now with no perceptible problems! Take a look at this that I came across and put together for a discussion list for teachers of business and economics: Anyone interested in some aspects of real live cost accounting, activity based costing in the Royal Mail in particular? There, that’s got rid of most of them! Here’s an ABC case study that is based on a topical issue, has excellent resources available completely free of charge, will enhance understanding of an ABC debate and can use role play as a central vehicle for learning, comprehension, application, analysis and synthesis. The case concerns the application of cost driver analysis and application at, wait for it, the Royal Mail. Surprised that a State owned organisation is using its information and logistical system properly? Be surprised no more and take a look at this page (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3660571.stm) from the BBC to see how the Royal Mail has realised that the weight based cost driver for letters and packets is no longer appropriate as the basis for calculating selling prices: maybe it was never appropriate. So now they have moved to a volume based cost/price mechanism and this proposal is known as Sized Based Pricing (SBP). Get the students to find out who and what Postcomm is since the Royal Mail applied to Postcomm in August 2003 for them to consider this change. The time frame for this review must be excruciatingly slow for the Royal Mail as it has taken until now for Postcomm to begin the process proper. In this Crown Copyright PDF dated 27 April 2004, http://www.postcomm.gov.uk/documents/competition/SBPsummary.pdf (Royal Mail’s Proposal to Introduce Size Based Pricing A Summary Document April 2004) Postcomm says: Following this further work, there will be a second consultation document, which will set out the responses to the first consultation and give Postcomm’s proposed decision on whether, and if so how, SBP should be introduced. It will also focus on the cost justification for Royal Mail’s proposal. Royal Mail will be required, amongst other things, to demonstrate that implementing its proposal would lead to prices that are more closely in line with its costs than the present weight-based pricing structure. The cost information provided so far by Royal Mail has not been sufficiently robust for Postcomm to reach a decision on this issue. The above PDF sets out the Royal Mail case for change: ideal lesson materials in which the students can be given paragraphs 6 – 10 and then analyse them with respect to the Royal Mail proposals for applying their case for change in paragraphs 11 – 17. Quite simply, the Royal Mail is saying that costs vary more in proportion to volume than they do to weight. You could set up some basic exercises to demonstrate this effect if you wished. There are further resources at Postcomm (http://www.postcomm.gov.uk/Index2.html), such as this Crown Copyright PDF file dated 26 April 2004, http://www.postcomm.gov.uk/documents/Media/042604SBPPN.pdf. (Royal Mail wants size to matter) In that file you can read that the proposed changes are designed to be revenue neutral … there’s some jargon to lighten up your lives. They also say: “These proposals would involve major changes. They mean that light but large mail such as very large greetings cards, CDs, rolls of photographic film, audio cassettes and video tapes, would cost more to post, but that some heavier items – books for example – would cost less. I hope as many people as possible will let us know what they think.” Royal Mail has suggested three sizes for a letter, a large letter and a packet.

• A letter is mail that would fit into an envelope 165mm x 240mm (approx 6½in x 9½in) and not more than 5mm (approx. 3/16 in) thick
• A large letter is mail that would fit into an envelope 250mm x 353mm (approx 9¾in x 14 in) and not more than 10mm (approx. 3/8 in) thick
• A packet is mail that either measures more than 250mm x 353mm or is thicker than 10mm.

If you worry at all about the consequences of interference in State owned organisations, take a look at what I think is an astounding paragraph in the document http://www.postcomm.gov.uk/documents/competition/SBPsummary.pdf (Royal Mail’s Proposal to Introduce Size Based Pricing A Summary Document April 2004) S19. Postcomm recognises, however, that Royal Mail’s proposal is a major change to its pricing structure. Its weight based pricing structure has been in place since the 19th century and many businesses and postal users have evolved their behaviour and business models to fit with this pricing policy. Is Postcomm really saying that because a pricing structure has been in place for over 100 years that it must stay in place irrespective of whether it is, or ever was, appropriate? Could be by the look of it. Postcomm have told us in their SBP Summary document that they have S29. Since Royal Mail’s application, Postcomm has met some trade associations (including the Greeting Cards Association, Intellect, the Mail Order Photofinishers Association, the Mail Users Association and the Periodical Publishers Association) and companies affected by Royal Mail’s SBP proposals. You can set up a three way role play in which students can take the role of

• the Royal Mail’s cost accountant
• Postcomm
• Trade Associations

and see what they can come up with. Marvellous! By the way, it's worth taking a look at the Postcomm pages since there are other reports that are worth downloading relating to this topic. Then there's this that I posted to the same discussion list later on in the same week: Two reports of note on our Public Libraries that will help to explain why the public sector might need a level of reform that is currently beyond comprehension. Tim Coates is a leading light in book selling and he has spent four years researching the ways in which our public libraries, in particular in Hampshire, are working. He tells us that only 9 pence in the £ spent on libraries comes back to us in the form of books: the rest is eaten up in admin and other things, some of which are useful for the end user and others aren’t. Similarly, Coates says that 20% of all money spent on Public Libraries is wasted. See Appendix 2 of the report for the financial data. Be very worried by these extracts from Appendix 3: acquisition costs A total of £2.0m of the total library service budget of £19-20m is probably spent on the Acquisition supply chain. The actual amount spent on books in the year 2003/4 will be £1.4m. Thus, the total cost of books and the various acquisition processes is £3.4m. In simple terms and after allowing for book purchase discounts, Hampshire spends over £24 every time it buys a £10 book. This is broadly in line with figures actually measured in other authorities. It is far too high a cost. Report pages 28 and 29 You can download Coates’ report from http://www.rwevans.co.uk/libri/downloads.htm. One statistic that Coates includes that is a candidate for the rubbish bin can be found on page 5 of his report: for HTML recipients of this message, here’s the graph he presents: Talk about believing all you read in the newspapers! Ask your students to say why the projections contained in this bar chart are probably rubbish. Sorry for the emotive language but I think it’s an irresponsible outburst of hyperbole on Coates’ part! Otherwise, the report is worth skimming for ideas for business and, of course, accounting: there are lots of management accounting ideas buried in this report. For a summary of the report, see yesterday’s Daily Telegraph: sorry I didn’t take a note of the page but I did scan the article for my own purposes should anyone want to borrow it! Charles Leadbeater has also written on the subject of Public Libraries, for Demos this time; and his report, which is nowhere near as comprehensive as Tim Coates’ report, is also available for download free of charge at http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/default.aspx?id=262 DW

Long time no Blog ... two weeks since anyone was able to read my tripe. In that time I have worked long and hard for little reward and received a set back to my career aspirations. No doubt life will add another element either to cover that or not as the case may be. At long last I have reformatted my desktop hard disk and reclaimed the majority of the 40Gigabytes that had just about been lost. Although it took me the best part of a day to secure all email addresses, bookmarks, email messages and other personal files (for me and the family) and then reformat and reinstall the software, it should be worth it. Had a small blip where the blessed thing would only want to boot from the CD-ROM drive in spite of BIOS changes to the contrary; but a good night's sleep and a reading of a book on Windows XP sorted that out. Ab initio, setting up a network is a real breeze: let Windows find the network at installation time and it seems completely free of all stress and nerves. However, trying to access the host computer's Windows Explorer directories from the guest desktop didn't go smoothly yesterday. Reading from laptop to desktop, however, was easy. All users have now been banned from installing anything with my say so: anything I find that I don't like will be deleted immediately. That's for the benefit of young Master D who is guilty of the most massive transgressions in this direction. Mrs W adds about a Kb a day and little more, on average! DW

I've started attacking my lawn again: mown the front lawn twice already and the back lawn once. Sonic came to call, too, last night. Here's Sonic and then the before and after back lawn pics! Sonic, although I hideously badly typed Sonics: Back Lawn before: Back Lawn after: DW

Went to Gloucester today with the family and spent some time in Gloucester Cathedral: Harry Potter is partly filmed in its cloisters. A lovely huge cathedral it is too. Worth a visit if you collect cathedrals! Some pics of the very Harry Potter cloissters for you: DW

The laptop's doing well so far, fingers crossed. A virus got in a wreaked havoc but I sorted it in the end. It was a Trojan that mainstream anti virus programs couldn't cure: CWShredder did for it, though! DW

Guess who came back to stay? My laptop ... hurray! Cost me a small fortune which someone said I should really have avoided by buying a brand new laptop and selling this one for scrap. Had the cost of the repair been just a little bit more, that could have been sagely advice and next time will see me taking that course of action. Laptops are brilliant as they provide oceans of flexibility in a tiny package but when they go wrong: it's really difficult to find someone even prepared to look at them let alone fix them spares are hideously expensive I suppose the expense comes from the idea that most laptops are owned and run by businesses/business people so their repairs are paid for out of business funds and not private pockets. Take a look at the desktop market now where there are full PC systems with Pentium 4 technology for as little as £299 inc VAT. However, the laptop came back with software called Roxio installed and large as life on the desktop and it came along with the wuamgrd.exe laden virus. Instantly I started getting problems and I thought that they hadn't fixed the bloody machine despite having a new battery and Pentium Processor. I ran my anti virus software but it found nothing that could explain what was happening; but then I found that wuamgrd.exe was running. Now I carried out a web search and learned that it was a little known virus that most anti virus checkers don't know about. Decided that it came along with Roxio so uninstalled that software and hey presto, no more wuamgrd.exe. You definitely need your wits about you these days. Speaking of viruses I am pleased now that I have got Office 2003 back as Outlook 2003 deals with viral messages and junk mail really effectively: almost seamlessly. Now I don't even need to look at these pox ridden messages as Outlook does it all for me. Trying to get my backup done with a DVD writer in the desktop, now there's another story! Happy easter! DW

Fingers crossed, knock on wood, don't tempt fate ... the horrific error 404 hits that I was getting on my site seem to have stopped all of a sudden. No idea why but I've been clean since February according to my web stats pages over at my ISP. You should have seen the numbers. When I investigated, though, I found that they came from such things as a spacer.gif file being out of place and miniscule things such as that. I have a nice new 404 page too, by coincidence: I built a couple of nice looking, albeit amateur, graphics for the page. Worth making a mistake just to have a look see! Anyway, I fixed a few and you lot helped me to find other things so well done to anyone who helped. Aaaah the relief! Hope they don't come back, now. DW

Have you noticed, surely you can't have failed to notice, that those inadequate young boys who wear baseball caps indoors and have jeans with crotches hanging round their arses are at it again? Hundreds of viral messages are pouring into my email account every week now. As if I'm really taken in by their convincing and witty entreaties to open their pox ridden files and have my computer flooded with their own version of whatever it is that turns them on. I really don't want to have to change my email addres but I've done it before and may need to do it again. This is all in addition to the spam that tells me I needn't pay a creditor again; how Uncle Sam will provide me with free property; don't I just love Java coffee; Viagra ... it's better than viagra. And so on. They are all dumped before I even see them once I have their subject or email account in my Junk folder. Waste of time and effort I'm afraid. DW

I recently applied for some part time work at a college not a million miles away from where I live. There was a formal advertisement in newspapers and elsewhere and even though I only learned about the job about 18 hours before the deadline for applications, meet the deadline I did. After about 10 days I received a reply to the extent that Unfortunately you were not succesful at this time. What on earth did they mean at this time? Now meaningless as that sentence was, I have latterly been trained to question such decisions so I called the man at the centre of this case to be told that even though the post had been advertised and so on, they had found someone in the meantime so my application had been in vain ... in other words, the whole process had been a sham. Whilst I do not intend to make more of a fuss than I am making here, I do find such cases distasteful as we are dealing with a publicly owned organisation together with a complete waste of resources that include my own time and effort. I listened to the man as he unveiled his side of the story and thanked him for his time. Let it be a lesson to us all: Britain's public services are operated in a questionable way at times and I remember the good old days when such things were unthinkable. The trade union would not have allowed this kind of thing to happen, let alone the rules of conduct of the College and the Local Authority that manages it. Thought I should tell you that! DW

Know what this is? TaTshhhh ... t ... t ... tsk ... tsk ... tsh ... tsh ... t ... t ... tsk ... tsk ... tsh ... tsh ... It's the sound you can hear when sitting on a bus or train or walking down the street and someone in the vicinity is playing music through headphones via their MP3 player, CD player ... they MUST be making themselves deaf. Pardon? DW

I walked from the centre of Oxford to Summertown yesterday and whilst it's only around 20 minutes of a hike, my feet were killing me by the time I got back to tne centre. Just goes to show. I walk rather than drive where I can but I don't normally walk in my office shoes these days. Hence, switching from walking in trainers to my stout shoes was shock to my poor system. The strain of a 40 minute round trip was of no consequence: I'm fit enough for that and more. Hobbledehoy isn't in it! I will persevere and I will win through! DW

This message just came in from a happy reader: Duncan, It's Michael ... from the States. I used the formulas you suggested in your website to create a spreadsheet in excel for my data analysis on my Dissertation. I showed my Major Professor your work and how I created a spreadsheet from what you had posted. Needless to say he was quite impressed. If you do not mind, when I publish my work, I would like to acknowledge you in the acknowledgment section of my dissertation. I do research in the area of hormonal response to stress over time. Your website has made this process much more simple. Thank you again, Michael ... B.S., M.S., CSCS, PhD. candidate Isn't that nice? See the safe hands you're in at www.duncanwil.co.uk? DW

This message speaks for itself: Dear Doug, I found my way to your page and think it’s excellent. I work in education and often come across signs on notice boards like this: PLAGIARISM No All your own work: Yes Then there may be warnings of dire consequences for the plagiarist … but with no guidance on how to work properly and effectively. Your paper takes us a long way from the notice board to a much better deal for student and assessor alike. I will be posting this message on my WeBlog at if that’s OK with you. Best wishes DW

The AQA A level Business Studies resources are selling well and comments recieved include this gem from Tim: OK, got the information and have downloaded the files. I will make a further donation in recognition of your hard work and the useful service provided. Very many thanks, Tim Sue said Chris your cases study sounds really cheap. We'll buy one in a few days. DW

Friday 26 March and I drove up to The Belfry near Birmingham. That's the golf course and hotel complex. Now you know that gold and I are incompatible bedfellows but I was there to present my Product costing system at the ACCA's Spring Update for Accountants. I attracted around 70 of the 83 delegates to the conference with the others attending parallel sessions. I think it went well and having spent ages preparing it, I was happy with the outcome. I timed the session to perfection, too, as I finished with 30 seconds to spare! That's good for me, that is! I took my camera with me but didn't take any snaps. I also stayed for the Beyond Budgeting seminar that ended the day in my stream and that was interesting too. Well done and thanks to the ACCA for inviting me! DW