Math 135

Math 135: Mathematical Modeling of Finance

I took Math 135 with Professor Stanton during my spring semester in 2019. This class focused on finances, which is something that I have not spent much time on in previous math courses, so I was excited to learn more in this class.

The first two chapters that were covered in this course did not specifically focus on finances. These chapters instead focused on the basic skills that would be needed to complete the math required in the finance section of the course. These skills were mostly algebra that I had already learning, which made this course easy. Throughout these chapters, the professor always provided real-world examples which helped to see how these concepts could be beneficial to use outside of the classroom.

The finance part of the class was a little more difficult just because it was concepts that I had not learned or had not seen in awhile. However, Professor Stanton provides numerous examples in her presentations, as well as the homework, so I was able to quickly learn how to complete each type of problem in various ways. With this chapter especially, there were many real-world connections and example problems as the math related to finances. We completed problems about loans, monthly payments, interest, mortgages, and other topics. This showed exactly when the formulas and skills we were learning in math would be helpful in the future.

There were three written paper projects in this course that dealt with one section of a chapter. These essays covered the differences between linear and exponential functions, simple and compound interest, and amortization tables and loans. All of these papers helped me to gain a better understanding of the topic as I now had to write about it instead of just completing math problems. These essays were also a great way to connect the skills we were learning to aspects of everyday life. The third written paper project, attached below, focused on loans and amortization tables. For this paper, my group chose to purchase a new car and a house. We researched the average cost of these items and then determined what our monthly payment would be when we took out a loan of a certain amount. By completing the amortization tables for these objects, we were able to see our monthly payments and how much of this payment was applied to interest, as well as see our resulting balance after each month. This course as a whole and this paper helped me to see how important the skills I learned in this class are and how they can be beneficial to me in the future.