Blah, Blah, Blah!: How do you use math???

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

How do you use math???

Parents,

Please tell us how you use math in your daily lives and at work. We are trying to better understand how the math that we're learning will provide us with amazing opportunities in life. Tell us about how the learning we're doing now connects to what you do.

Thanks,
Mrs. Daley

12 comments:

Anonymous said...: Hi Mrs. Daley,

How do I use math? In many ways! Today I was helping a relative with their financial situation. We had some fees deducted from a credit card balance. We had to deduct the fee from the remaining balance to know how much was owed to the credit card company.

If you are managing your money well, a person has to use subtraction and addition all the time, to make sure a bank account is balanced (so you know how much money you have to spend or how much you are saving).

If someone ends up using a credit card, then they need to pay attention to the interest rates (percents) and fees that are charged on that money borrowed if it isn't paid off in full each month. It can get very expensive if you don't pay attention to these features of a credit card-all relating to math.

Thanks for the opportunity,
Jackie (Mitchell's mom); October 15, 2008 at 2:31 PM
Anonymous said...: In my old job I used math like this:
I would calculate people's debt to income ratio giving them their Overall Debt Ratio.

Paul(Alex's Dad); October 15, 2008 at 3:21 PM
Anonymous said...: I guess one of the most common life related math problems is tipping. When you get the bill after a meal at restaurant, you need to decide what percentage you want to tip and then you have to do some simple calculation.

Anna[Jenny's mom]; October 15, 2008 at 3:37 PM
Anonymous said...: Hi Mrs. Daley,

How do I use math in my daily life? Well, adding and subtracting with decimals happens the most with balancing the checkbook and anytime I use money at the store. Often when I am baking, I need to either double or halve a recipe which requires me to add and subtract fractions.
Those are a couple of ways I use math in my daily life!

Kathy (Alec's Mom); October 15, 2008 at 4:28 PM
Anonymous said...: Hi Classroom 19!

I am in corporate finance. I use math in every aspect of my job, whether it is determining whether or not to enter into an agreement with a customer or determining if we are making money as a company. We also have to make sure that even if we are making money as a company, we are a healthy company, meaning we have a healthy "balance sheet". What is a balance sheet you ask? Let me try to explain….

Let's say you borrow $1 from your parents to start a lemonade stand. Instead of using the $1 to buy supplies to make lemonade so you can sell it, you buy a candy bar and eat it. So now, you ate the candy bar and owe your parents $1. That is a bad balance sheet. Now, let's say instead of buying a candy bar, you use the $1 to buy supplies to make lemonade. You go home and make lemonade. Assume you sell 6 cups of lemonade for $0.25, how much money will you have in your pocket???????

That’s right, $1.50. Therefore, you now have $1.50 in your pocket and owe your parents $1. You have enough “assets” ($1.50 you made selling lemonade) to offset the “liabilities” ($1 you owe your parents).

That is a healthy “balance sheet”…..

I hope this gives a little insight as to how math is used in the workforce!!

Matt (Courtney P’s Dad); October 15, 2008 at 7:35 PM
Anonymous said...: Today I am working with several of my team mates trying to figure out how much service revenue we are going to generate. Of course there are a LOT of numbers involved. And we also had to break it down to the months, and divide to the people we have. What we have found that we need more people to serve the business we have sold.

Tracy (Kerry's mom); October 15, 2008 at 8:18 PM
Anonymous said...: Math is everything! I work in computers and software for Microsoft. Everything we make, whether its Xbox, Microsoft Excel, Smartphones, or Internet Web Server, is based on software and Software *is* math. The word 'computer' comes from the word 'compute' which means adding two numbers. That's math! So the next time you're fraggin' your friends in Halo, writing the most amazing paper for Mrs. Daley, talking on the phone, or researching on the web you can thank math and the engineers who used math to make all these breakthroughs possible.

Thanks,
John (Cole's Dad); October 15, 2008 at 8:19 PM
Anonymous said...: I'm on diet, so every time I eat something I'll look at the nutrition facts label and calculate the calories intake based on the per serving amount. At work, I estimate on the number of hours needed to finish some tasks and add them together to see how many task I can finish each week.

Kim (Mattias' dad); October 15, 2008 at 8:42 PM
Kalyan Basu said...: Hi Class & Mrs. Daley,

I'm in the software business, and we use math pretty heavily in our work. Let me give you some examples of the kind of problems we have to get computers to solve for us. For instance, can a computer tell me the shortest way to go from one classroom to another, using corridors and other rooms in your school building? Well this sounds so easy for you, but imagine letting loose a computer in an imaginary school building with thousands of rooms and passages (think about Harry Potter's school, Hogwarts). It's not so easy then is it? Again, suppose I ask a computer to color the map of USA using just 4 colors, so that no two neighboring states have the same color? Designing good computer programs for these kinds of problems need us to understand the math behind them. For instance, for both these problems, we need to know a bit about the math of things called Graphs. Math is pretty much there in most things we do. I like Math, but sometimes wonder, why does it have to be that way?

Have fun,
Kalyan (Krithi's dad); October 15, 2008 at 10:19 PM
Anonymous said...: I use math every day at my job. I figure out how much to charge customers for the things we sell to them. I total all the dollar amounts that it cost us to buy something (say, a t-shirt) and then ADD a certain percentage to that cost. That is the new amount we sell the t-shirt for - and that is how a business earns their money.

I also buy stocks for an investment club. I use math to figure out how many shares of a company we can buy. If we have $500 dollars and the company we want to buy costs $10 a share - I know we can buy 50 shares - because 500 divided by 10 = 50.

- Mrs. Knutson (Connor's mom); October 16, 2008 at 8:06 AM
Anonymous said...: Parents,

Thank you for sharing with us the ways you use math. We are going to return to your comments when we enter specific units that tie to the comments you've made. I appreciate the time you've taken to let us know that what we're learning is valuable!!

Thanks,
Mrs. Daley; October 22, 2008 at 1:08 PM
Anonymous said...: I told you we were not evil

TO THE BEST TEACHER EVER

Cole :); October 22, 2008 at 7:07 PM

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

How do you use math???

12 comments:

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