IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-0-230-59501-9_8.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Near Enough

In: Margins of Error in Accounting

Author

Listed:
  • D. R. Myddelton

Abstract

Every company has its unique features and accounts can give only a very broad impression of financial position and performance. ‘Within quite wide limits it is relatively unimportant to the investor what precise rules or conventions are adopted by a corporation in reporting its earnings if he knows what methods are being followed and is assured that it is followed consistently from year to year.’ (1932 AICPA Committee, quoted in May, 1972, p. 76) In a complex world there is bound to be a substantial margin of error in accounts and we should not exaggerate their possible accuracy. ‘What generally matters is not whether a number is right or wrong, they are often wrong, but whether numbers are so wrong as to be misleading.’ (Blastland and Dilnot, 2007, p. 94)

Suggested Citation

  • D. R. Myddelton, 2009. "Near Enough," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Margins of Error in Accounting, chapter 8, pages 134-144, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-59501-9_8
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230595019_8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-59501-9_8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.