Michael's Love The Office Surprise 1 (An Interracial Romance) *COMPLETE*

Finding the Error

Laura slowly rose from her seat behind her desk and walked over to the other side of her desk as if to make Micheal wait. Micheal, for his part, was carefully spreading the large poster sized spreadsheet over the top of Laura's brown desk. Laura looked impatiently as Micheal smoothed out the paper on the edges of the spreadsheet.

Laura looked at the large white paper peppered with coffee stains and large editing marks. She felt her patience leave as she felt exhausted from the days events. Laura opened her mouth to resume her earlier confrontation with Micheal when he began talking. Micheal pointed in a sweeping circular motion on the left hand side of the paper and said, "OK, these numbers are our model's prediction of the market for using data from the last five years. These numbers are close to the actual performance, but are off by under 5 percent." Micheal paused for input from Laura.

“Yes, you already told me the numbers are wrong. I mean really, I've been looking at those numbers for the last hour Micheal." Laura said sounding as if she had just about lost her patience with Micheal. "Tell me what you want to tell me...geeze" Laura continued.Save & Publish

"Just give me a minute, Laura.” Micheal said quickly while putting his hand up. “Look right here." Micheal said pointing to the right side of the paper in the same circular motion over some different numbers. "Here we see the numbers for the last ten years, the difference between our model and actual performance is around 15% off here."

"Hmmm" Laura said. Her eyes opened wider and she leaned over onto the paper to get a better look at what Micheal was pointing at.

"Yeah, I thought that would get your attention...OK, Laura, now look here." Micheal said pointing to the bottom right hand side of the paper. "These are the numbers when applying 30 years worth of data. And as you can see...”

"The difference is over 40%." Laura interrupted Micheal.

"Exactly! Now I am not sure why this is happening, but at least we know what is happening." Micheal said with a knowing smile.

Laura then said, “So the numbers are wrong. We knew that. But they are wrong with a pattern. Which tells us that we can fix the model...”

Then Micheal Joined in as they both said, “by removing the function that caused the pattern!”

Laura looked into Micheal's deep brown eyes as Micheal looked into Laura's blue eyes. In that second Laura felt a fluttering in her inward parts. She thought about how bad she had treated him, but this intelligent man had gone out of his way to help the company. And to help her.

As they stared at each other for 15 awkward seconds, there was a knock hat it was an awkward 15 knock at the open door. It was Dr. Stephens.

“OK, where are you two on this problem?” Dr. Stephens asked.

“Micheal just found a pattern in the numbers.” Laura said.

“Pattern?” Dr. Stephens asked as his voice raised and he stood up straight.

“We know that as you increase the amount of data the model's performance degrades.” Laura answered.

“Sounds like a rounding error.” Dr. Stephens said.

“OK, I need to get on a plane. You two need to see if you can isolate which of the three components of the model is producing the erroneous data. I don't have to tell you, our companies survival depends on this presentation in Orlando. If our model is broken, then we can forget any new money coming to continue our development and our company.” Dr. Stephens lectured.

Dr. Stephens then said, “I will tell Carol that you two need to have dinner brought in. Call me as soon as you know what is wrong.”

“Also Laura, get those research assistants from Applied Research. They could have been the originators of this whole mess.”

Dr. Stephens rushed out of Laura's office.

“I hope you didn't have plans.” Laura said to Micheal.

“My girlfriend probably ain't gonna take this. She already mad and I'm bout to stand her up again.” Micheal responded. “As much time as I spend in the office, she is going to think you and

I have something going on.” Micheal continued.

“A hot date with my girlfriend is now gonna turn into a date with my boss and some numbers on a spreadsheet.” Micheal said.

“You sure know how to make a girl feel wanted.” Laura said with a mischievous smile on her face.

“You know what I mean.” Micheal smiled.

Carol walked up to Laura's door and asked.

“OK what will it be? Chinese, Indian, Mexican, something else? Carol asked

“Chinese” Laura said.

“I thought the man was supposed to order.” Micheal said quickly.

“You on a date with your boss, the boss gives all the orders.” Laura playfully said.

“And Carol, also get that research assistant, John, from Applied Research in here.” Laura said.

“Will do,” Carol said while walking to her desk.

“OK, there are three components to Dr. Stephen's financial model. It will be about two to three hours before John gets here. Then we can re run the full 30 years of data. So why don't you take the pre-formatting component and I will take the number crunching component. Then both of us can work on the out put component once John gets here.” Laura told Micheal.

“Sounds like a plan.” Micheal said as he walked out of the office.

A smile came on Laura's face as she watched Micheal gracefully walk out of her office.