In People v. Collins, 68 Cal. 2d 319 (1968), the California Supreme Court wrote that it could “discern no inherent incompatibility between the disciplines of law and mathematics”. While the Supreme Court may be correct about the relationship between mathematics and law, I’m not so sure about the relationship of lawyers to mathematics.

Every quarter, the California Department of Financial Institutions distributes a quarterly report presenting summary statistics for banks, industrial banks, credit unions, offices of foreign banks and trust companies with a one-year comparison. The report provides some interesting information. For example, the Department’s most recent report discloses that the number of state chartered banks has declined by 14 from September 30, 2009. However, assets increased from $238.3 billion to $246.0 billion, or 3.2% over the same period.