THIS IS THE age of the data scientist. Employers of all kinds prize people with the skills to capture and analyse enormous amounts of information, to spot patterns in the data and to turn them into useful insights. But some of the most valuable figures in business need neither an analytics team nor knowledge of Python. They are simple to remember and useful for bosses in every organisation. Here is a small selection of management’s magic numbers:

这是数据科学家的时代。各种各样的雇主都很看重那些能捕捉并分析海量信息、从数据中发现模式且将之转化为有用见解的人。但是商业中一些最有价值的数字既不需要分析团队也不需要人懂什么Python。它们简单好记，而且对每个组织的老板都有用。以下就是管理学的一组神奇数字。

Zero:Doing nothing can be the most valuable thing a manager can do, as the fable of Atwood’s duck demonstrates. Jeff Atwood, a computer programmer, is credited with popularising the (possibly apocryphal) story of a piece of deliberately unnecessary work that an animator did on a video game called “Battle Chess”. 

0:无为而治可能是管理者的最高境界，就像“阿特伍德的鸭子”（Atwood＇s duck）相关的故事展示的那样。人们认为是电脑程序员杰夫·阿特伍德（Jeff Atwood）使得这个（可能是杜撰的）故事广泛流传，它说的是有一名动画师在制作一款叫“决战西洋棋”的电子游戏时故意放进了一个不必要的设计。