Since I was a kid, I got math. When all of my friends slaved away on long division, integers, and trigonometry, I reveled in it and loved how it challenged my brain power.
My SAT math score, which was almost 700, was almost 150 points higher than my verbal score (but apparently even combined with my 3.9 grade-point average, it wasn't good enough for Stanford - blech).
I was a member of the Watsonville High School Math Club for four years, even going to the number geek equivalent of a yearly decathalon in Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo every spring, just to compete with other number geeks from all over California.
Now, I don't say all of this to brag. It's really part of an evolutionary tale.
Where I went horribly wrong was in college, in friggin' first-year Calculus. I blame my spectacular fall from math on my horrible math professor (brilliant mathmatician, to his credit, but lousy teacher), my even-worse roommate who for some reason hated me, the 8 AM class time...and just my dwindling self-confidence.
That math geek identity, so essential to who I was, went into deep hiding for the next two decades.
Once I got that math requirement out of the way for my degree, I never took math again until I had to, doing statistics for both my psychology major and my master's degree program later on. Earning the equivalent of "A" grades, by the way.
So now, as I've become a copywriter and web marketing specialist, all I can say is...hallelujah for Google Analytics!
Tracking the performance of my websites has become enjoyable, thanks to this tool appeals to that long-dormant inner math geek. Of course, learning all the terminology that comes with it (bounce rates, unique visitors, pageviews, etc.) is like learning Italian, which I'm also doing now. But it's helping me to understand where sites need some SEO tweeking, if my blog posts are holding visitors' interest - hi, there - and seeing if my content is worthy of your valuable time.
This article has further helped me understand what I need to get from these numbers. But truth be told, I could look at this kind of stuff all day. That's just the nerdy girl in me coming out to play.