Smile Please

On a sunny afternoon three accountants are standing near a tall pole and wondering about the height of the pole. First accountant, a CPA says, I do not think there is any authoritative guidance on how measure the height of a pole, that is not the job of accountants. Second accountant, a professor at a state university says, well, if we take a survey of similar locations and asked people about the height of poles, then we may be able to deduce height of this pole, it will be a good enough estimate. The third accountant is a professor at an Ivy league university. He confidently claims, if we measure the shadow of the pole under different conditions, then I can run a multivariate regression model and can give a very good estimate of the height. As this conservation is going on, an engineer is passing by, he stops and asks about their discussion. Accountants tell him, you probably can not understand this complex problem. The engineer persists and hears about the problem. He smiles, lifts the pole from the base, measures it, and says, "twelve feet and three inches," and walks off. Accountants look at him, laugh contemptuously and say in unison - "hell, we wanted to know the height of the pole and he tells us the length."