If you're not a numbers person, then finance can be intimidating and easy to ignore. But if you want to advance in your career, you'll need to make smart financial decisions and develop the confidence to clearly communicate those decisions to others. In How Finance Works, Mihir Desai-a professor at Harvard Business School and author of The Wisdom of Finance-guides you into the complex but endlessly fascinating world of finance, demystifying it in the process. Chapter 2 focuses on financial analysis and ratios, which many think is what finance is all about. In fact, it's just the beginning-to see that, we'll establish two foundations of the finance perspective: cash matters more than profits; and the future matters more than the past and present. What are the true sources of economic returns? Why might accounting be problematic? If the future matters so much, how do we arrive at values today based on those future cash flows?