The math of art.

 Lord knows, I'm no mathematician. I failed Algebra in high school, quickly followed by failing Astronomy in college. 

But I use basic math, addition, subtraction, division, multiplication fairly well; and it applies to all things business.

I was listening to a podcast about the 18th century mathematician, Pierre-Simon Laplace, and I realized that I was basically using some of his ideas in running my business--in the most elementary form. One of the commenters used the phrase, "intuitive math," and that really sounded about right. 

Reminds me of when I went up to see a business adviser at COCC and he described my processes as being "a primitive sophistication." I'm still not totally sure if he was complimenting me or insulting me. 

I've gotten better at business because I now have much more data to work with. When I started, I did my research, as I always try to do when starting a new venture, but there was almost no information, either specifically--about comics shops--or more generally, for small business, that was useful.

Most of the information that would have useful about comics was privileged information, available only to the publishers and the wholesalers, and they weren't sharing. 

I realized after making some rather drastic mistakes following the advice of "small business" books that most of the information contained there-in were for operations much bigger than mine. There were--and are--very few books about Mom and Pop sized businesses. I suppose there is no money in writing such a thing. (I wrote an ebook about my experiences called, "Small Business Survivalist Handbook," which almost no one has read. Heh.)

Anyway, in a sense I use this data to make predictions, "probabilities" if you will. I usually construct three possible outcomes: a low, a middle, and a high. Usually, about halfway through the time-period I can make a pretty accurate estimate of which outcome is most probable and make more adjustments.

I'm also aware that humans can't be predicted, that they are the ultimate chaos factor, so all such predictions can be radically wrong.

However, I also tend to think that things settle into a normal range, and I'm always aware when outcomes are way outside that range and plan accordingly. Things always trend back to "norm," and it's the safest way to proceed. 

I can't really use formulas, so to speak, because the smaller a business is, the more idiosyncratic it is going to be; the more individual choices influence the outcome. The larger a business, the more uniform it is likely to be, and therefore broader formulas more likely to be accurate. 

And so on. It's impossible to know outcomes, so you basically use "intuitive math" to try to negotiate your way into the future. A Mom and Pop business is probably more an art than a science, but that doesn't mean you can't use math in your art.