An hour before the fiscal year ended, Tess noticed that the council's grand poster had no unit beside its largest figure. (fiscal year: financial year, accounting year) Its fiscal committee had asked her to aggregate the quarterly totals. (fiscal: financial, budgetary, revenue-related; aggregate: combine, add up, total) She could add them, but their distribution among the villages was another matter. (distribution: allocation, apportionment, allotment) One district had a surplus, another a deficit. (surplus: excess, remainder, overage; deficit: shortfall, shortage, deficiency) Their combined result would conceal the difference.
The deputy wanted a single quantitative measure of prosperity. (quantitative: numerical, quantity-based, measurable) Why not call the proceeds gross domestic product? (gross domestic product: alternate name GDP) Tess put down her pencil. Sales at a village fair could hardly measure the value of all final goods and services produced in a country. His easy extrapolation from one stall to a nation would make the council a laughingstock. (extrapolation: projection, extension, inference) They could extrapolate from a sample only if they knew what it represented. (extrapolate: project, infer, estimate)
He tried productivity instead. (productivity: productiveness, productive capacity, output capacity) Tess divided completed orders by hours worked and showed him that the printer with the fewest sales had printed the most pages per hour. This time he understood the distinction. (distinction: difference, differentiation, contrast) By dawn the poster showed hours, orders and receipts in separate columns. Its least conspicuous figure was the only one every member remembered: the bill for resetting the type.