Standing ovation.<p>People think accounting is just sums -- it&#x27;s not. It&#x27;s the <i>interpretation</i> of sums. Balance sheets and P&amp;L statements don&#x27;t follow some law of nature; they are careful crafts that try to convey specific concepts about how a company views itself and how it thinks <i>other people</i> should view it. Like all things written by humans, these documents can lie, misdirect, and bend the truth to an agenda. It takes skills to craft them and to decipher them.<p>Accounting is &quot;just sums&quot; in the same way being a playwright is &quot;just writing&quot;. It&#x27;s a shame that formal education seems to fail at communicating this to the general public; Western society is based on capital but few people understand where and how this capital actually is.