Finite Math with Excel
This represents work supported in part by NSF grant
DUE-IUSE-1625222
The goal of the grant was to make math education more effective for
business students.
One of the sub-projects of the grant was to produce a text and
course for a true Business Calculus course, with the assumption
being that students would have laptops and would use an Excel
spreadsheet as their primary computational engine. The open
source, online text, Business
Calculus with Excel is the result.
A second sub-project was to have a flavor of College Algebra aimed at
business students. In particular, the course was to have
a greater emphasis on modeling. The idea is that the problems
will routinely have the structure of starting with a collection of
data, choosing an appropriate mode for the situation, finding the
formula that best fits the model to the data, an then answering
questions about the function defined by that formula.
A third sub-project looked at modifications to a finite math course,
taken mainly by business students, to use Excel when appropriate
This is consistent with the recommendations of the MAA CRAFTY
committee's Curriculum Foundations Project (CFP). While the
material was developed for business students, the material should
work with minor adaptation for any modeling based Finite Math
course that uses spreadsheets.
Worksheets - The modeling skills were developed with a series of 7
worksheets. With each worksheet, the students spent the class
period working in groups. They finished outside of class and
turned in completed assignments one week later. The course
assumed the students had no prior experience with Excel.
- Section 1-3, Goal
seek and intersecting curves.
- Section 1-4 Linear
Modeling
- Section2-3 Matrix
Multiplication
- Section 6-2 Assigning
probabilities (Counting from a data set)
- Section 7-1 Visualizing
Data with Excel (has a data file)
- Section 10-2 Annuities
and Bank Balances
- Section 10-4 Financial
decisions (With Loan Setup
worksheet)
If you are interested in using this
material in a class, please let me know.
Mike May
mike.may@slu.edu