Numbers games.

I should've gone into statistics, had the course I not taken in it in college make me cry. In fact, I know I'm a bit of a maths whiz. Not a sort of 'ethereal' maths whiz where you have trains departing upside down and a jelly donut involved, but a practical maths whiz. I am good a budgets, I am good at figuring out audience percentage, I am good at balancing a check book.

In short, I'm good at people math.

Part of being out on the job hunt has been trying to figure the percentage of applications I need to apply for in order to result in an interview. Now, this isn't me just applying for random jobs. They must be related to prior work, within a rough salary or contract frame, and hopefully - hopefully provide me personal satisfaction. (I am picky, thank you.) Because of my extensive and very odd range of work, this offers me opportunity that, say, someone who has only undertaken one version of work - like corporate accounting - cannot have.

So I figured my range and targets, and like a good little marketer I have hit those targets. Within those targets are goals. Those goals are based on Cadbury Cream Egg Acquisition. Namely, that I need to sit and write excellent applications, and each which results in an interview yields access to one Cadbury Cream Egg, the bane of my existance. Sometimes, for motivation, I line them up next to me, like a sales person shooting for a sports car, and look at them fondly whilst I pull up a successful application and analyse it for further contribution.

This method has worked well, resulting in a fixed intake of one Cadbury Cream Egg per week thusfar. I have yet to purchase my true reward for at last hitting my acceptance into work - which is the huge Cadbury Cream Egg Easter Extravaganza of Chocolate - but I'm thinking I should, because the egg goals have worked out so well.

Now, what this whole thing is really about is why can't we teach kids math skills through things like this? Real things, important things, like getting as many of those tasty chocolate/cream eggs in your tummy? Honestly, we need to change our tactics. Granted, if it was always about chocolate/cream Easter eggs we'd probably need to consider the obsesity problem, but I doubt kids would leap at a celery initiative.