How I use math in everday life - Essay Example

? How I Use Math in Everyday Life Introduction My interest in math is due to my grandpa who used to mingle math puzzles during his story telling sessions. At times, his questions were so simple that they generated spontaneous answers from me without giving any serious thought to it. Later, when he would explain me the real math behind it, I used to get amazed with the findings. Soon I realized that one needs to have his or her math in order if one has to be a successful performer in the life. My Early Interactions with Math In one of the session when I was 13, my grandpa asked me a simple question, “What would you prefer – working for 30 days to get paid 5 million dollars at the end or 1 cent the first day and then doubling the amount each day such as 1, 2, 4, 8, 16…. up to 30 days period”. My obvious answer was 5 million dollars at the end of 30 days. He laughed at me and told me that I need to have some lessons from a Jew (with full regards to Jews of course!). I could not understand how I could go wrong on such a simple query. He made me sit and asked me to do the exercise manually. Though tedious and torturous the calculation was it surprised me when I finished my calculation that revealed me that I would have garnered as much as 536,870,911 cents or $5,368,709. Much more than 5 million dollars and certainly much more rewarding indeed! My succinct reply to him was “But how can one finish such lengthy and time consuming calculations?” He replied “Babe it is easy to calculate and simple if you know the math”. That is how I got attracted to math in early stages. It was later in high school that I came across summation of geometric series given in a mathematical formula in the form of a ? (1-r n) / (1-r) that my grandpa introduced me when I was 13. Sum of the series (1, 2, 4, 8, 16…) can be given as (geometric progression with multiple 2) S = 1(1-2 29) / 1-2 = 536,870,911 cents My teacher in Dinwiddie high school was superb so far her grasp in the math was concerned. She introduced me many math concepts such as interest rate, percentage, averaging and many more. She would tell us math is an applied science and more we apply in our daily life, the better it is shaping our life. In my school days, Chocolate bars would usually cost 60 cents each and during festival and week-end retailers offered 30 percent discounts. I was quick enough to calculate my savings in cents as (60 ? 30)/100 = 18 cents. That means the effective cost of each Choco bar would be only (60-18) =42 cents. My limited spending power of $5 on this item per week would buy me nearly (500/42) = 12 Choco bars and that were good enough for me to last more than a week. One of the most useful concepts in the math is percentage that helps me in my daily purchases. It is a good way of comparison that makes decision easier and quicker. Math in Kitchen When I was 16, I came across Fairy Cake recipe published in one of the reputed magazine. I decided to make the cake myself. The recipe was designed for 15 people and ingredients were 156 gram butter, 156 gram self-raising flour and 156 gram caster sugar, 2.5 tablespoons of milk, and 2.5 large eggs. No standard packing in the above measurements (156 gram packing) is available. Nearest available smaller packing is 100 gram. I decided to use 100 grams packing of sugar, butter, and flour. I needed to adjust milk and eggs in the same ratio. Math helped me there. I calculated milk quantity as (100/156) ? 2.5 = 1.60 tablespoons of milk and 1.6 of large eggs. Obviously, my prepared cake was sufficient to serve (100/156) ? 15 = 10 people. Math helped me a lot in my experiments of preparing some of the delicious dishes in those days and now. Math in My Profession My flair with math helped me in my nursing career too. Often, I do not have the correct dose on hand as prescribed by the doctor; therefore, I have to calculate the dose that I need to give based on what I have on hand. Other day, I was working on the 3 to 11 shift when a heart patient complained of chest pain. I assessed the patient to get proper vital signs knowing the on-call physician would need critical information before instructing me on next steps. I conveyed the doctor about patient’s vital signs and told him that the patient might get cardiac arrest. The doctor ordered Dioxin 0.125mg tablets to be given orally. I knew I only had Dioxin 0.25mg in stock so I had to calculate how much medication I needed to give my patient based on what I had in my med cart. To calculate the dose I used the D/H x Q calculation. This means desired dose divided by dose on hand times the quantity. The equation looks like this 0.125mg/0.25mg x1 = 0.5 or 1/2 tablet should be given to the patient per doctor’s order. As a nurse, we are always challenged to make drug calculations because we often do not have the exact dose that the doctor prescribes. I continued to monitor the patient for approximately 1 hour and she still complained of chest pain. I immediately called the on-call doctor again and informed him of the situation. The patient’s vitals were not too far from baseline so I did not think that we needed to get the patient to a critical care unit. Instead, I suggested to the doctor that we run an intravenous infusion of nitroglycerin. The doctor agreed and ordered 1000ml of nitroglycerin in dextrose 5% in water to infuse over 8 hour. The infusion set I had on hand delivered 10 drops per minute. For my nursing notes, I needed to document how many drops per minute my patient was actually getting by using the 10 drop tubing. To calculate this, I took the doctor’s order of 1000ml of nitro and divided it by the 8 hours so as to arrive at right dose on per hour basis. By calculation, it turned out to be 125ml per hour. To calculate further per minute dose, I divided the figure by 60 so as to get 2.1ml of the nitro per minute. This implied that 10 drops per ml tubing with me I needed to infuse 21 drops of nitro per minute. The equation actually looked like this: 1000ml/8hrs = 125ml/hr and 125ml/hr/60min/hr = 2.1ml/min and 2.1ml/min x 10gtt/ml = 21gtts (drops) per minute. Needless to say infusing Nitroglycerin was successful and the patient was relieved of chest pain. Knowing how to calculate drugs and proper administration of medications is very important and used daily in the hospital and Nursing home setting. Rent versus Owning a House During early '90s, I had an important decision to make whether to own a house or rent it. During those days interest rates were hovering around 7.5 percent. I knew that I would have to take a burden of property tax (1%) and insurance cost (0.6%) over and above mortgage cost if I decided to own a house. The decent house would cost me $250,000 minimum and similar home was available for the rent of $1100 per month. If I go for renting the house, my yearly expense would be (1100 ? 12) = $13,200 per year. My ownership cost had three major elements: Interest, property tax and Insurance. After making provision of 15 % down payment, I needed to borrow $250,000 ? 85/100 = $212,500. The interest burden at the rate of 7.5 percent would amount to 212,500? 7.5 /100 = $15937 per year. Insurance at 0.6 percent would amount to $250,000 ? 0.6/100 = $1500 per annum. Adding property tax at 1% would cost me $ 250,000 ? 1/100 = $2500. Thus, total outgo would be $(15937 + 1500 +2500) = $19,937. Thus, owning the house was costlier by $ (19, 937-13,200) = $6,737 per year. I decided to calculate the difference between two costs (renting and owning) in percentage terms. In percentage terms, this amounted to (6737/13,200) ? 100 = 51.03% over the cost of renting the house. Based on this mathematical insight, I decided to rent the house rather than buying until the situation became more favorable to buy the house. A few years later, when interest rates went down up to 4.5 percent, I bought my house. Thus, waiting to buy my home later paid off. Math indeed saved me a lot of money! Switching to a New Fuel Efficient Car Other day, I was planning to buy a new car. Fuel prices are ever rising and so is the cost of running the vehicle. Fuel economy has been one of the major considerations while making a decision for buying a car. On dealer’s tempting offer to buy a new fuel-efficient car, I decided to make a fair comparison between my existing and a new car offered by dealer purely on the basis of fuel saving that whether it is worth buying or not. My daily running of the car is about 50 miles. My existing car offers me the fuel economy of 28 miles per gallon (mpg). That means I spend 50/28 = 1.785 gallons of fuel every day. A car dealer has offered me a similar sized car of the different make with the increased fuel economy of 32 miles per gallon (mpg). Thus, fuel consumption is likely to be 50/32 = 1.562 gallons per day. Net savings of the fuel per day in gallons will be 0.223 gallons. Assuming my car would be running at least 50 miles even in the off days, my per year fuel saving would be 0.223?365 = 82 gallons. The ruling gasoline prices are $3.5 per gallon that means with new car, I would be saving nearly 82? $3.5 = $287 per year. This saving is not lucrative enough to go for a new car as owning a new car will entail the monthly burden of $280 toward loan repayment installment itself. Thanks to the math which saved me from making a bad decision in this case! Conclusion Math has always helped me to make correct decisions in my life. Ever since my grandpa initiated me to the nitty-gritty of the math, I always enjoyed learning the new concepts. These math concepts have made my life easier and smoother in advancing my professional career enormously. I can say for sure that math is universal in its approach and it has no language barriers. It is a game of numbers and one must master it for a smooth sailing in the life. Reference Geometric Sequences and Sums, (2011). MathsIsFun.com. Retrieved June 23, 2012 from http://www.mathsisfun.com/algebra/sequences-sums-geometric.html Read More