I’ve been rather pre-occupied with the numbers lately. That’s because there were two very major data releases at the very end of June that excited me very much.

For one thing, the SBA Office of Advocacy and Census finally released the 2007 firm size class numbers. Then, days later, Census released the new nonemployer numbers for 2008.

Even better, there were lots of surprises. To read my analyses of both data sets, you can go here and here and here.

I love data. Quantitative, qualitative, I love it all.

So it probably won’t come as too much of a shock to you to discover that I’m planning to head back to school in September. I’m going to be studying anthropology and I’ll probably want to specialize in cross-cultural economic anthropology when all is said and done.

I’m thinking that there are distinct limits to how much economics can tell us about microbusinesses. And I’m thinking that the truly useful stuff will come from a different way of thinking about and studying them.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to shut down my businesses or stop writing about and researching and consulting about microbusinesses.

The pace of my activities may slow ever so slightly, that’s all.