Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2013 September 7

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September 7

How much shine should shoes have for business formal?

In a North American business formal setting, when one is wearing a suit with black leather dress shoes, how shiny should the shoes be ideally? Should they be military parade boots mirror shiny? Or is that too obnoxious? Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 01:25, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the shoes could be too shiny. Just don't blind anyone. --BDD (talk) 04:28, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Do you want people to pay attention to you or your shoes? Clarityfiend (talk) 06:40, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

When I worked in an office in London, I always shone shined my shoes. It's surprising how many people don't bother at all, but I used to get lots of favourable comments. So I suppose it depends whether you want to blend in with the crowd, or make it look as though you've made an effort. Alansplodge (talk) 08:08, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Personally I just mostly don't pay attention to shoes, period. Am I the exception?

On another note — "shone", really? This is more language-desky, but I would never use shone as the past tense of transitive shine, but only intransitive. The Sun shone brightly as I shined my shoes. Is this a pondial difference? --Trovatore (talk) 09:29, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm from the UK and I would also say "the sun shone" and "I shined my shoes", but "I shone my shoes" sounds more unusual than wrong to me. -- Q Chris (talk) 10:52, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, normally shined for shoes. The OED says: "To cause to shine, put a polish on; orig. U.S. (inflected shined) to black (boots)". Wiktionary, in its entry shine has a separate etymology for the shoeshine sense, allowing only "shined" and not "shone". I agree with the comments above that it sounds more unusual than wrong to say "I shone my shoes", though I might ask "did they have built-in flashlights?" Dbfirs 11:59, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

My shoes were shined, and then they shone. I lighted the candle, and then it was lit. The batter flied out, as the ball flew out to the leftfielder who then caught it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:45, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Mea culpa! Now corrected. Alansplodge (talk) 17:02, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Personally, (coming from an industry where "formal business attire" means finding a T-shirt with a slightly less offensive slogan to wear under your hawaiian shirt with your shorts and sandals) I'm horrified that anyone still cares about this crap! Do any branches of business still judge a person's worth by the shine on their shoes? Out here in the 21st century, whatever that industry is, I want nothing to do with it! SteveBaker (talk) 14:47, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I was just about to post something similar. If you tried to make my fellow scientists where anything formal, you'd have a riot on your hands! Why would you need to wear a suit etc in an office? I just don't get the point! 82.21.7.184 (talk) 18:12, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

'I polished up that handle so carefully, that now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navy'. Making an effort with appearances was important when H.M.S. Pinafore was written and it is still important nowadays if you want to get to the top in business. Dmcq (talk) 18:22, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I think it's rather absurd to assign control over the most powerful military force in the whole world based on how well someone did a minor cleaning task. You would think there would be other, more relevant, criteria that might be employed. - I'm reminded of Allan Sherman's version of "When I Was A Lad" [1], which, after regailing us with the narrator's efforts and successes in rising through the business world, concludes "So I thank old Yale, and I thank the Lord ... and I also thank my father who was chairman of the board." -- 71.35.99.22 (talk) 20:28, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Nepotism can help. But the argument about having your suit or uniform in polished perfection is that it indicates a keen sense of attention to detail, which is certainly a useful skill in the military as well as in business. It reminds me of Crash criticizing Nuke for having moldy shower clogs. "Look classy, be classy. Then once you get to the majors, you can go back to moldy shower clogs and they'll say you're 'colorful'." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:00, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

• Predict your co-workers' behaviour, and don't exceed it. Adjust your behaviour on the following day according to your observations on the first. Repeat. μηδείς (talk) 01:11, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
  • It's also a good idea to silently gauge that situation during the interview process, to be better prepared for the first day on the job. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:51, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

First impressions are always important (so the saying goes) particularly for a job interview. If you were the only person with highly polished shoes it may make you more memorable. If the interviewer happened to be ex-military, then you may make a very good impression with them. Slightly off-topic, if you are going for an interview, try to find out the interviewers name if possible. You can learn a lot of possibly useful background info. about them by Googling or from sites like LinkedIn. --220 of ^Borg 06:35, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

• Cites: "Shoes as a source of first impressions". Journal of Research in Personality (pdf-228 Kb), Volume 46, Issue 4, August 2012, Pages 423–430, (the 'brightness' of the shoes was judged on a 1-7 scale, see Table 3.), & "The First Impression". Psychology Today, May 14, 2004. --220 of ^Borg 07:11, 8 September 2013 (UTC) Corrected - 220 of ^Borg 07:19, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

No, they should not be military parade boots shine. High gloss shoes are totally inappropriate as business attire. Just wear clean polished classical black shoes. OsmanRF34 (talk) 06:36, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Formula for computing the Compound Annual Rate of Return (CAROR) of an investment

What will be the CAROR for an investor who commits to a regular $1000 per month for a period of ten years and one month later sells his entire investment and ends up with (12 X 10 x $1000) $120,000.? (Forget inflation) In this case he "breaks even" - he invested $120,000 and got back $120,000. But what happens to this same investor who sells his investment one month later and gets back $180,000 - this is 50% more than he invested. He made 50%. But what was his CAROR? What if he got back $240,000? He made 100% on his $120,000 investment. But what was his CAROR? Obviously, the first $1000 has been working for 121 months while his last $1000 was only invested for one month.

The reason for this request is to help me be able to better understand the potential value of an investor who makes such an investment and ends up with a certain specific amount of money. It is my assumption "anyone" choosing to invest using a regular investment in an ETF or mutual fund replication the SP500 (for an example) would end up with a certain CAROR. No one an accurately project the future. But what I'd like to "get" is (perhaps) the average of the past 15 years of rolling 120 month periods of time of the SP500. But is there a formula to get this I know there is for a set dollar amount invested at one time - but i am unaware of any formula which takes into consideration periodic but specific monthly investments over a period of time.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by TalFletcher (talk • contribs) 19:21, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

It's not simple to get the rate of return since it involves a polynomial equation of degree n where n is the number of time periods (n=120 in your example). What I would do is use the formula

$FV=P(1+i)^{120}+P(1+i)^{119}+\dots +P(1+i)^{2}+P(1+i)^{1}$

where FV is the final value, P is the payment made each month, and i is the rate of return per month. The formula says that the first payment grows at the rate (1+i) for 120 months, the second payment grows at the same rate for 119 months, etc. I would suggest plugging the right side of this equation into a spreadsheet for each of various values of i until the value of the right side is close to equal to the true value FV on the left side. This i is the monthly rate of return; to get the annual rate of return r, use $(1+r)=(1+i)^{12}.$

See Mortgage calculator#Monthly payment formula and Compound interest#Monthly amortized loan or mortgage payments for the related (or reverse) problem of paying a debt down to zero with monthly payments. Duoduoduo (talk) 21:12, 7 September 2013 (UTC)