Nevin Manimala

(Reuters) – Statistics for Sunday’s Canadian Formula One Grand Prix in Montreal, the seventh race of the season.

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Lap distance: 4.361km. Total distance: 305.27km (70 laps)

2018 pole: Sebastian Vettel (Germany) Ferrari

2018 winner: Vettel

Race lap record: One minute 13.622 seconds. Rubens Barrichello (Brazil), Ferrari, 2004.Start time: 1810 GMT (1410 local)

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CANADA

This weekend will be the 50th Canadian Grand Prix, and 40th in Montreal.

Hamilton has won six times in Montreal (in 2007, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017), including the first of his career. Another victory will equal Michael Schumacher’s record of seven in Canada.

The Briton can also beat the record he currently shares with Schumacher of six poles in Montreal.

Daniel Ricciardo (2014), Kimi Raikkonen (2005) and Sebastian Vettel (2013, 2018) have also won in Canada. Ricciardo’s first win in F1 was in Montreal. Raikkonen shares the record for fastest laps in Canada (four) with Schumacher.

The circuit is named after late Ferrari great Gilles Villeneuve. Ferrari have won 12 times in Canada, with seven poles and nine fastest laps.

The rain-hit Canadian Grand Prix of 2011 was Formula One’s longest race, lasting four hours, four minutes and 39.537 seconds. The safety car was deployed six times, another record.

The circuit is particularly tough on brakes.

Racing Point are Canadian owned and have the only current Canadian F1 race driver in Lance Stroll.

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RACE WINS

Hamilton has 77 victories from 235 races and is closing the gap to Schumacher’s record 91. He has also won 55 of the 106 races in the V6 turbo hybrid era that started in 2014.

Vettel, third on the all-time list, has 52.

Ferrari have won 235 races since 1950, McLaren 182, Williams 114, Mercedes 93 and Red Bull 59. Former champions McLaren and Williams have not won since 2012.

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POLE POSITION

Hamilton has a record 85 career poles, Vettel 55.

Two of the six races so far this season have been won from pole – Bottas in Azerbaijan and Hamilton in Monaco.

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PODIUM

Hamilton has 140 career podiums and needs to finish in the top three in every race this year to equal Schumacher’s record of 155. Vettel has 114.

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MILESTONE

Mercedes have won the first six races of the season, and the last eight in total.

The record for most successive wins by a team is 14, by Ferrari in 1952-53. McLaren won 11 in a row in 1988.

The rapid growth of smartphone enabled ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft represents one of the biggest recent technological changes to daily life. One wonders what other areas, beyond transportation, iPhones and Androids might soon upend.

In recent years, some prominent, Uber-like disruptors have emerged. As just a few examples, there’s Handy, which provides on-demand cleaning and installation services, and Upwork connects individuals and businesses with on-demand labor for projects in IT, design, accounting and more.

But technological possibility seldom echoes economic reality. Case in point: The recent snail’s-pace growth of gig jobs illustrates the need for caution in interpreting how digital applications will reshape key elements of the labor market.

Up until recently, little data from the U.S. government existed on recent worker participation in “gig” arrangements such as independent contractors, temporary help agency work and workers provided by contract firms. The last time the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) conducted a special survey to measure involvement in the gig economy was in 2005. But Congress discontinued funding for this survey for more than a decade and brought it back to life only recently, in 2017.

Given the rapid changes in digital technology and their visible impact on consumers and businesses in the past decade, numerous studies looking at the gig economy on labor markets were constrained by partial evidence due to the void in hard statistical information from the BLS. For example, in 2015 a survey was conducted with support from the RAND Corporation that used a telephone survey to simulate the lapsed one from the BLS. Its efforts to mimic the BLS methodology were quite sophisticated but necessarily incomplete without the same level of resources as the BLS itself. The report detailing the survey results found that the share of contingent and alternative work arrangements skyrocketed from 10.7% of employment in 2005 to 15.8% in 2015.

Taking those figures at face value, this would mean that a whopping 94% of new jobs created in the U.S. between 2005 and 2015 were non-traditional jobs. That number continues to reverberate in media and political circles, because it illustrates a profound change in the relationship between employers and employees, as well as a shift in job prospects for millions of Americans.

But when Congress resuscitated the BLS survey that had gone dark for over a decade, the results told a fundamentally different story than the RAND-sponsored one. The new BLS survey, released in 2018, showed that the share of employees working in contingent and alternative work arrangements had in fact declined between 2005 and 2017, from 10.7% to 10.1%. So, despite the proliferation of platforms enabled by mobile devices, the new BLS data illustrate that the share of Americans working in non-traditional jobs has remained largely unchanged since 2005.

Following the publication of the new BLS estimates, economist Lawrence Katz along with Alan Krueger (who recently passed away after an illustrious career as a labor economist and policy advisor) compared their panel results (the RAND-sponsored survey) with those from the BLS survey. They provide new evidence that suggests that the government’s estimates tend to mismanage instances of multiple job holdings. And, they also describe how the strengthening of the labor market likely allowed some gig workers to find full-time permanent positions between 2015 and 2017.

Apart from the new BLS data, other recent data poured more cold water on the narrative of platform proliferation. In 2015, one report found that Uber and Lyft accounted for the vast majority of searches for online labor market platforms. Moreover, it turns out that growth among one-person businesses was faster between 2002 and 2007 than between 2010 and 2015, directly contradicting the idea that mobile platforms were driving employers and employees towards non-traditional work arrangements. The more important development compared to the impact of mobile devices has probably been that employers have moved many jobs in non-core functions, like janitorial services and computer support, from their own payrolls to professional service contractors.

It is important to note that new inventions do not automatically imply adoption. Today, firms could hire all workers in an on-demand spot labor market and workers could work in such a market, but neither group has chosen to do so as was anticipated before. While using such platforms is a better way of finding workers or jobs than what was previously available, consumer habits, management practices and government regulations must adapt to new technologies for them to reach full flower. Even though stories of change will likely draw more attention than stories of continuity, we should remain data-driven in assessing the impact of technological change on the economy.

With thanks to Brian Schaitkin, Senior Economist at The Conference Board. This column is the first in a two-part series on what we can learn from recent government statistics about the impact of the digital economy. This column focuses on its impact on jobs; the next will focus on its impact on output, investment and productivity growth.

June 3, 2019

Miyka’El Jones ’22 meets with a recruiter from ADM at the 2018 IWU Career Fair.

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. –– Illinois Wesleyan University far surpasses most other institutions in preparing graduates for their careers, according to an annual graduate survey from the Hart Career Center and a job placement analysis by Zippia.

Based on 86.7% of recent graduates who responded to the Hart Career Center survey, 96.6% are either employed or in higher education programs within six months of graduating from Illinois Wesleyan. Additionally, the University’s high career placement rate landed Illinois Wesleyan at the top of Zippia’s list of “Best Colleges For Jobs in Illinois.”

The list from Zippia, a career advice website, used public data from Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard to analyze job placement ratings of four-year institutions in Illinois, with a focus on employment levels 10 years after graduation.

Not only do Illinois Wesleyan alumni find jobs quickly, they find jobs that reward them for their knowledge and skills. The average full-time starting salary for 2018 graduates was $47,486, taking into consideration graduates in healthcare, education, technology, and other growing sectors. Another recent Zippia survey ranked IWU No. 1 in Illinois among “Small Colleges with the Highest Earning Graduates by State.”

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) identifies critical thinking/problem solving, oral/written communication skills, teamwork/collaboration, information technology application, leadership, professionalism/work ethic, and career management as core competencies for career readiness, and Hart Career Center Director Warren Kistner ’83 says an Illinois Wesleyan education instills students with these very skills.

“I believe it is a combination of factors that lead to our students’ success,” Kistner explained. “Strong academics, a diverse array of extracurricular activities, practical experience in their field of interest, and many other experiences prepare students to contribute to the success of an organization and/or excel in graduate/professional school.”

Furthermore, WalletHub named Illinois Wesleyan 22nd in the nation in its annual Best Colleges Ranking, and it’s not the only college advice website which has acknowledged the success of the University and its graduates. To read more about what others have to say about Illinois Wesleyan, visit IWU’s Best Value Rankings page.

By Rachel McCarthy ’21

What do your business’s vital statistics tell you? The short answer is it depends on how you look at them: your financial data and management information will tell you what’s happened in the business to date, but for most small and medium-sized enterprises, the greater value lies in what the numbers suggest might happen in the future. As in a car, the rear-view mirror is useful, but what drivers need most is a clear vision of what lies ahead.

That’s easier said than done. Hard-pressed SMEs often lack specialist finance teams to turn raw data into business insight; they may be led by executives trying to manage operational responsibilities as well as to think strategically; and they don’t always have access to third-party advisers who can help paint the bigger picture while also getting the detail right.

Professional advice is certainly worth considering, if it will help you build strategy from your statistics, but there’s plenty you can do in-house too, if you know what to focus on. Consider these six areas for starters:

Crunching the cash flow

Cash is king for most SMEs – even successful businesses have gone under because of short-term cash flow difficulties. Based on your previous cash flows, try to identify where the potential vulnerabilities might lie and how you can tackle the problems before they escalate – for example, by building daily cash flow forecasts so you can spot a crunch moment well before it arrives.

It’s not just daily operations you’ll need to consider. The cash in your business will be a key factor in its ability to grow. Do you have the headroom required to expand into new markets, for example, or to offer new products and services, or to open new outlets? If not, should you consider working capital finance?

Managing the risk

Successful businesses know that the good times may not last forever and they work hard to understand what might cause them difficulties. A crucial part of anticipating future risk is understanding where your business’s exposures lie – and whether one of those exposures is excessive.

Take, for example, your customer base. You may have diversified across different parts of the market, but do you also have a sufficient spread of customers? If you’re over-dependent on any single customer, its problems will very rapidly become yours. That may not be obvious until you’ve crunched the data.

Modelling the future

The top-down view of your business’s future is what it hopes to achieve. The bottom-up perspective covers how those targets might be met. For example, your goal might be to move into a new overseas market – in which case, factors to consider will include distribution, the supply chain, sales and marketing.

To link these two views, you’ll need to construct financial models that map out the future according to your goals. Adjust for factors such as the economic climate, the dynamics of your market and the nature and scale of your ambitions, in order to plot a roadmap to achieving your ambitions.

Grinding the granular

Entrepreneurs very often bring a particular set of skills to their business ventures: creativity, ambition, passion and commitment are attributes that spring to mind. Very quickly, however, they must also learn the nitty-gritty of running a growing company – in particular, they have to get to grips with financing issues despite having no training or experience in accounting.

The danger is that the detail gets missed – the headline numbers may make sense, but not what lurks beneath. Think about the knowledge gaps in your business and how to close them.

Opening up opportunities

Is your businesses confident it knows how to grasp the opportunities ahead of them – and which specific opportunities are worth grasping. How, for example, do SMEs make the jump to the digital world, given the opportunity it offers to scale up rapidly without major infrastructure investment? What do the numbers tell you about which investments will generate the greatest returns?

You may never have had to confront these challenges before – in which case, working with advisers who’ve helped others with them may be invaluable.

Adjusting to the agenda

As well as the small print, successful entrepreneurs assess the broadest possible picture of what lies ahead – including the external factors that may impact on your business. What’s happening in your industry – and what might that mean for you – and what are the challenges coming down the track for all SMEs? That might be anything from Brexit to increases in the national minimum wage. What impact would change have on the finances of your business and how do you plan accordingly?

CLOSE

EVANSVILLE – In this age of analytics, sometimes the old-school saying “statistics are for losers” still readily applies.

Purdue-bound Martinsville starter Brandon Dodson had allowed just three earned runs in 53-2/3 innings entering the Artesians’ Class 4A regional baseball semifinal Saturday against Castle at Bosse Field.

Undaunted, the No. 8 Knights scored three earned runs in the first three innings and rolled to an 8-2 victory.

Once again, freshman and No. 9 hitter Caleb Niehaus came to the forefront. His bases-loaded double to left-center field boosted the Knights’ advantage to 6-1 in the third.

Castle will play the winner of Saturday’s second semifinal between No. 3 Columbus East (22-4) and Jeffersonville (18-6) at 6 p.m. for the title. The Knights are the defending regional champion.

To be fair, Dodson (8-1) did allow only those three earned runs in his four innings of work, as the Artesians committed four errors behind him.

Niehaus had an RBI grounder in the second as he finished with four runs batted in for the first time in his brief varsity career.

“It feels good,” he said. “I got a fastball upstairs. I was looking for a ball to hit and he threw it in the right spot.”

His two-run double snapped a 6-6 tie in the 10th as the Knights went on to defeat Jasper 10-7 in the sectional semifinals, also at Bosse Field, on May 25.

Like Dodson, Castle starter Blake Ciuffetelli entered the semifinal with a perfect record. Bound for the University of Southern Indiana, Ciuffetelli threw a complete game, scattering six hits in improving to 8-0. 

“I just try to pay attention to myself, not what they do,” he said. 

Ciuffetelli settled down after allowing three successive singles in the bottom of the first. He wriggled out of the jam, giving up one run.

“They scored one run,” he said. “I knew I had the ball up. But that’s where i settled in.”

This story will be updated.

More: Niehaus delivers game-winner in 10th for Castle in Class 4A sectional baseball semifinals

More: Ciuffetelli leads Castle’s band of brothers into Class 4A regional

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Castle’s Blake Ciuffetelli was winning pitcher in 4A regional title game last year, hopes to lift Knights in regional semis on Saturday Gordon Engelhardt, Courier & Press