Reviews the book "Mathematics for Finance and Accounting," J.B. Coleman and William O. Rogers.

Reviews the book "A Study of the Relative Usefulness of Six Accounting Measures of Income," by John Arnold and Mohamed El-Azma.

Reviews the book "Management Accounting."

Reviews the book "The Structure of Postwar Prices," by Frederick C. Mills.

Reviews the book "Introduction to Linear Programming ," by A. Charnes, W.W. Cooper and A. Henderson.

The article focuses on the problems of methodology in accounting theory and principle. If a general methodology in accounting could be agreed upon, theories developed within this framework would stand a better chance of gaining widespread approval. As it is now, both the ends and the means are constantly in dispute. In accounting, there has been a long-standing belief that accounting is an art which does not lend itself to formalization. This attitude is being challenged increasingly. The effort towards formalization must face the issue of improving methodology, otherwise researchers in the field may be working at cross-purposes. Here the author discusses the difficulties which arise when accounting theory is developed without sufficient attention to the conceptual framework, and shows how theory formulation in accounting may progress by adherence to a more formal general methodology. He remarks that lack of methodology in accounting theory in the past has resulted in poor definition of terms.

Reviews the book "The Significance of the Standard 'True and Fair' View," by David Flint.

The elementary course in accounting, as it is taught in most instances today, is specifically designed to provide a base upon which to build a structure of accounting knowledge. This base consists to some extent of the broad principles of accounting, but often, to a much larger extent, of detailed methods of technique and procedure. At the outset several questions are bound to arise concerning any changes in the elementary course. It has been the writer's experience that sixty to eighty per cent of the first year accounting students are merely fulfilling requirements for a degree and have no intention of taking additional accounting courses. If such is the case, the needs of so large a majority cannot be reasonably ignored. Students often have no intention of taking more than the minimum of accounting until they have completed the first year course. Thus, students taking the non-accounting major course frequently find an interest kindled which leads them on to the advanced accounting courses. The elementary course, however taught, is not sufficient to make the student an expert accountant. It does provide him with the basic mechanics of recording, classifying and summarizing the usual transactions of business. It does not provide him with an adequate basis for interpreting and analyzing the accountant's work.

This article discusses the matching concept in accounting as defined by the 1964 Concepts and Standards Research Study Committee of the American Accounting Association. The committee first considered whether the matching convention is still a useful concept to guide financial reporting practices. Since the fundamental long-term objective of a business entity is to earn a profit, this financial data, to be most meaningful, should include information about profit determinants, including costs and revenues. Only by including these data can the reasons for and the extent of progress of the entity toward its primary objective be disclosed. Following this thought a bit further, one's judgment regarding the effectiveness of a specific effort is improved if it can be related to its contribution toward the recognized objective of the entity. In business operations, costs, defined as resources given up or economic sacrifices made are incurred with the anticipation that they will produce revenue in excess of the outlay. Within this frame of reference, one can then say that costs constitute one measure of business effort, and revenues represent accomplishments coming from those efforts.