Follow your heart, Bloomberg reporter Michael Wei told the Global Business Journalism students. You will be much happier in your career.

Wei works with the team compiling Bloomberg's billionaires list, but he studied finance as an undergraduate and also worked at a bank for a time.

Although he had a fancy title at the bank -- senior associate -- "I didn't really like it. I feel I have always liked being a journalist."

Wei was a guest speaker May 20 in Professor Lee Miller's Data Mining class. He said his interest in journalism led him to get a master's degree at Beijing University.

His first job was as a translator for Reuters. While he found the job at times both demanding and boring, he felt that he learned the basics of journalism there. "I learned how to write stories fast without making mistakes." He told the students not to be afraid of accepting a low-level job, because it will help them learn and grow in their career.

He believes his finance background has helped him in his work on compiling Bloomberg's list of the 200 richest people in the world.

The Bloomberg list is different from others in that it is updated daily. The rankings change based on market moves and news events that could affect the value of debt or equities.

Last week, for example, Bill Gates displaced Carlos Slim from his long-held spot as the world's richest man after Microsoft shares climbed in value.

Bloomberg has a 17-person team around the world assigned to compiling the billionaires list. They track 450 people and 7,000 public companies to compile the list of 200. They also track private companies and estimate their values based on comparisons to similar companies or inferred values. For example, the value of Jack Ma's Alibaba stock is based on the part of it owned by Yahoo.

Wei said an important characteristic of the list is that the methods used to estimate assets and liabilities are explained in detail. "We try our best to show clients how we make the calculations." In that way, readers are more likely to suggest inaccuracies and how to correct them, making for a still more accurate list.

What's the value of such a list beyond mere prurient interest? "We want influence," Wei said of Bloomberg. "We want to be the most influential financial information provider in the world. And we want to promote transparency."