On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 5:46 AM, Sabri Oncu <[email protected]> wrote: > Gar Lipow: > >> But cashed based accounting can be very misleading too. > > True. Therefore, we should agree on the following: profits are NOT > OBSERVABLE without errors. Put differently, "point forecasts" of > profits are meaningless. We need "interval forecasts". That is, we > need to know something about the entire distribution of that random > variable.
Absolutely. There is commonplace among accountants that accounting is a form of philosophy . Choices must be made among measures and definitions all of which are imperfect, all of which will misleading in some circumstances. Bookkeeping can be error or free or as close to it as humanly possible because a bookkeeper can comply pretty exactly with whatever accounting choices are made, and remaining errors are due to accounting not bookkeeping . But accounting by nature is highly approximate and error-filled. > > Best, > Sabri > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Facebook: Gar Lipow Twitter: GarLipow Grist Blog: http://www.grist.org/member/1598 Static page: http://www.nohairshirts.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
