How Jo Craven McGinty Overcame Her Mathemaphobia

Jo Craven McGinty, of the Wall Street Journal

It has been a long, hard struggle for Ms. McGinty and her congenital mathemaphobia. As an infant she screamed in terror at the sight of wooden blocks with numbers painted on them. As a child she had but a garbled conception of the numeric system, singing in an innocent voice:

"One, Five, a big bee hive."

"Eleven, nine, the old log pine."

"Three, zero, a big fat gyro."

In grade school her arithmetic scores were so abysmal that she was put in a Special Learning classroom that consisted of her and sixteen garden gnomes from neighboring homes. And she still got the lowest score in the class.

Worried about her future, her family did their best to prepare her for a career where math, or even just the ability to count sequentially, was not needed. They encouraged her to either run for Congress or become a banker.

Unable to face the bleak future her family predicted for her, Ms. McGinty ran away from home at the age of sixteen to join the circus as a ticket seller. Her manner of selling 'ducats' (circus lingo for tickets) was so chaotic and bizarre that she inevitably shortchanged her customers -- who preferred to lose a few dollars rather than endure Ms. McGinty's explanation of how 7 goes into 28 thirteen times. 

Circus management was not slow to recognize her unique business acumen, and consequently raised her salary and gave her a private table in the cook tent. Her future was assured, until she accidentally spilled a plate of pork and beans on the show's star attraction, Swami Herzog. The Swami was so incensed that he immediately cursed her with the algebraic genius of an Einstein -- and her circus career was dead as a door nail. 

Abandoned to perish on the side of the road by the heartless circus brass, Ms. McGinty was saved from starvation by a kindly reporter from the Durham Sun, who brought her to his home, cleaned her up, and gave her a job at the paper counting subscription revenue. From there it was only a hop, skip, and a jump, to her current position as numbers specialist for the Wall Street Journal. 

Her advice to young reporters just starting out in analyzing the numbers behind the stories is:  "Count your blessings, then make sure to deduct the sin tax." 

When not caressing her abacus, Ms. McGinty likes to collect bezoars. 

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