I'm really bad at math. Need help figuring out this allocation

[Mattie]

It's true, I actually do love math

My favorite memory of math!

 

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[mt_myke]

For a niche like 'improving basic math', you would probably have good luck if you made it relevant, as in addressing these needs:

• calculating mortgage
• calculating grocery bill
• calculating energy usage (put up generic figures for refrigerators, computers, etc)
• calculating gasoline bill (vehicle mileage, price of gas, miles per day)

Just off the top of my head anyway. Might not be worth it, I don't know.

That's ome niche, not exactly what I was going for. The original inspiration was pop finance (think Yahoo Finance). The articles are either the tired useless Slowlane classics like "cut out your daily coffee and retire with millions in 60 years" or interview highlights. The second kind are sometimes good, but no one learns anything about how markets work, or even basic business, unless they got a MBA or studied it themselves.

That's where my site comes in. The OP's question is exactly what I'd be going after - things that are useful, simple, but either long forgotten or never learned. Nobody cares about percentagewise allocation problems when they learn them in middle school, or remember any of it. I don't recall ever learning about time value of money, other than as one example problem in calc 1. I would then expand those lessons into articles like "ahould you play the lottery?", doing a different ananlysis than the usual one that merely focuses on the odds while ignoring risk:reward (there are a very few times where it's actually rational to buy a single ticket, under certain assumptions).

Your examples are good too, again it's an iterative process. I would like to teach intro global macro econ and finance, but if articles about working out the bills are what bring in readers then that's the direction I'll go...this is a business after all.

 

[mt_myke]

My favorite memory of math!

That's the formula for the roots of the quadratic equation (the polynomial ax^2 + bx + c).

Just in case anyone was wondering, which you probably weren't...

Now you might say "why do I care about this for business??" but that's a curve that appears often in nature, has a single maximum/minimum, and by "nature" I'm including natural systems like supply chains, profit, etc. Once your business is at the point where "the numbers" matter, you should have time for it. If you have a startup with an expected negative cash flow next year and then positive cash flows after that, and someone is offering you a loan, and you're trying to figure out if it's a good deal...you should care. If you're making decisions "seat of the pants" and your competitors are using models with numbers from past operations to find max profit and minimum cost quantitatively...you should care.

 

[Ninjakid]

My favorite memory of math!

I pray to the almighty quadratic equation every night.

 

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[Mattie]

Thank goodness those days have been done and over with for a few years now. You keep praying Ninja! lol

 

[P3HSB]

Don't know if statistics counts as math but there is awfully a lot of numbers involved and I am getting killed atm. Just failed my midterm badly. Made me feel terrible coming into Thanksgiving. smh

 

[Mattie]

Don't know if statistics counts as math but there is awfully a lot of numbers involved and I am getting kill atm

Oh God! I hated that class too! I don't remember it very much though! I must have blocked it out! I do remember the first class I signed up for the professor was so dam boring and put the class to sleep, I withdrew right away and waited until there was another teacher, and he was so much more fun. I was one of those people that highlighted my entire books, just because!

And I'm remembering things I don't want to remember all that studying.

 

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