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Any native english speakers?

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kalos:
Yo no comprendo.
STEP 1 (calculate)
STEP 2 (proof)

...That's it.
It would seem to be an elementary accounting question.
-IainB (December 24, 2017, 08:23 PM)
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Yeah, I know, but how much you calculated it to be? Because I find 3.1

TaoPhoenix:
...
Generally speaking one will not necessarily be able to establish a significant statistical trend from just 2 (or 3) successive annual data-points. A significant trend usually only emerges over longer time-series data. Thus, to be correct, there are no "trends" in the data given in the example.
...
-IainB (December 23, 2017, 10:16 PM)
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In some of the business reading that's crossed my eyes in the midst of a wide project, I am confused here.
I "almost" agree that no *two* points make a "trend", but doesn't *three*!?

Linguistically, to me, it becomes questions like "sustainable trend vs short lived trend", because businesses "do business" in Year 1, click along, close the books. In Year 2, they "do more business", close the books, and someone does the subtraction and goes "uhh... Boss? What happened here?"

It's at least fundamental to American Accounting, that assuming no foul play, Management Reports "what happened" and it could be "anything".

But the *third year* comes along and when the books close, Management has to decide (and here's a cool linguistic trick):
Level 1. "Okay, what's going on."
Level 2 "Wait, what IS going on!?"
Level 3 "What is going ON?!!"

And it's legendary in business theory they either perform *briliantly* in year 4-5 (sometimes it takes a year of just ops to come in), or they MISSED a fundamental and can *crash*. (With varying years of market inertia etc. Sorta like the iPhone 3GS showed up, and I did that one right, it was EXACTLY the model to avoid early phaseout, but had *just* enough firepower to be a "supported model" and mine lasted me about *six* years!"

So then it takes a while for the Blackberry to grind out its endgame, but there it went.

So not counting a "tread-water" year in year 4, a business had really better have a GRAND "Stage 3GS" plan or they croak.

IainB:
@TaoPhoenix: My apologies for not explaining better!
I was not using the word "trend" in a context where one might intuitively or"linguistically" expect it to be used, but in the context of it being used as a valid statistical tool for assessing past annual financial performance. Trends are statistical tools really only relevant over longer term datasets, and they are of little use/applicability in assessing past corporate annual financial performance over the short or longer term.

With the heading Any native english speakers? (sic), the OP illustrates a question regarding (I had thought) the use of Engrish in a hypothetical/artificial case - a set of annual expenses and income data for a company over a 2-year period - where the student is asked to project what the tax would be at the end of year 3 at 35% tax rate on an income projected on the same rate of growth/change as occurred between the 1st and 2nd years.

What does "trend" mean?
trend
· n.
1 a general direction in which something is developing or changing.
2 a fashion.
· v. (especially of a geographical feature) bend or turn away in a specified direction. Ø chiefly N. Amer. change or develop in a general direction.
– ORIGIN OE trendan ‘revolve, rotate’, of Gmc origin; cf. trundle.
Concise Oxford Dictionary (10th Ed.)

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Clearly (I hope), I have been using the word in the 1st sense: "a general direction in which something is developing or changing".

However, this may be largely irrelevant as, from @kalos' last comment, it now seems as though I was wrong and the OP was actually seeking the answer to the question (what is the tax value in year 3?).    :tellme:

IainB:

mouser:
Hate to stick my head in here for risk of making a fool out of myself.  You seem to have found the answer, but I am embarrassed to say that what should be a simple math problem confused me.  Somehow intuitively I assumed that if the component trends stay the same, the total trend change would stay the same percent, and so that all we should have to look at is the trend in income before taxes, and that therefore the before-taxes income percentage change would stay the same year after year..


I guess if you think about it, it makes sense why you can't just look at the overall before-taxes income trend.. If your costs are growing at a very small rate and your sources of other income are growing at a higher rate, then your overall trend in net income will be increasing at an increasing rate.

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