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When I was 17 or so, I can remember getting into a new car a friend (now a White Stone attorney) owned and driving from Irvington to White Stone. Being a teenager, I was easily impressed, and particularly so by the LCD speedometer which showed the car’s actual speed in digits.
When I got home, I told my dad about how “cool” the car was and how these new speedometers were the thing of the future. My dad replied, matter of factly, that they would never really catch on.
“Analog,” he said, “is almost always preferable to digital.”
I had no idea what he was saying. He explained.
In conveying information, the human brain can process analog information (visualize the rotary dial) much more easily than digital (straight numeric printout). Digital may be more precise, but analog is easier understood at a glance – particularly when spotting trends or large quantities of data.
Ever seen a weather map with burgundy, red and yellow for the intensity of storms? This is a great analog representation of digital information. In this case, the wind speed or rain downfall is digitally precise, but the visual representation on a weather map is more easily processed by our brains to see where and how hard a storm is hitting the area.
But it’s not perfect. Ever been in the car listening to the weather report and the announcer tells you he’s looking on his computer at the weather map and it’s showing rain at 1-2” all across the area. But you are driving through your town and there is a torrential downpour? Thus, analog’s visual representation of data has a major drawback. It is not precise.
There are times, however, when we don’t need precision. We only need to see the larger trends.
Virginia is in a financial storm of its own. General Fund revenues for Fiscal Year 2009, which ended June 30, are anticipated to be $14.6 billion dollars, down from last year’s revenues of $15.7 billion dollars. The projected decline that was forecasted for FY09 was -7.3%, but the year-to-date figure for May 2009 is already at -9.3%. It is estimated that in order to reach the -7.3% projected decline, June revenues have to come in at a 10.2% increase. Overall, it’s anticipated that FY2009 will end with a $300 million revenue shortfall on top of the $2.9 billion that was already cut from the budget during this last session.
These figures are the digital representation of the Commonwealth’s revenues, and while these numbers are precise, they don’t reflect the trends the way an analog representation in graph form does. The Secretary of Finance recognized this and was able to produce a graph showing each month’s growth percentage against the year to date growth rate.
The precise figures (digital) give the same information, but the graph (analog) visualizes the growing downward trend.
Just as you know that 3-4” of rain, with winds 35-40 mph are conditions representative of a heavy storm, it’s not until you see the red band of storms moving towards your county on a weather map, that you truly feel the need to batten down the hatches.
It’s the same for those of us who are decision makers and constantly provided with complex data in digital format. Until that information is translated into analog representation, the larger trends are easily missed and the big picture isn’t truly felt.
You can visit my website at www.albertpollard.com and click on the link “Virginia’s Economic and Fiscal Climate (July 15, 2009)” to “see” Virginia’s revenue numbers as presented by Finance Secretary Rick Brown. It is a pretty bleak analog representation of Virginia’s most recent finances - almost enough to wish you had stuck with the digital representation in this column.
As a final note, I was speaking the other day with my attorney friend who owned the Subaru with the digital speedometer. I mentioned this column and he said, “You might want to mention that was the last digital speedometer I ever owned. I’ve gone back to dials.”
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