Your friend Amanda’s home flooded recently, and all her furniture was ruined. You and several of her closest friends have joined together to raise money to buy her a new set of living room furniture. You have been tasked with estimating how much money should be raised.

Explore living room furniture purchase options online. Choose at least six pieces of furniture. In your post, you will list each item, include the item URL, and include the approximate cost of the item rounded to the nearest $100. Calculate the estimated total of your purchase.

Do you feel this is a reasonable estimate for what must be purchased? Explain.

Unit two:  Budgeting is a tool that helps you plan where your money gets spent. It is a process that allows you to determine whether or not you will have the funds to do the things you want to do. You can use this tool to focus your spending on the things that are most important to you.

Initial Response Post:

Do an internet search and find the starting salary for the job you hope to get with your degree. In your post describe your profession and what starting salary you found and include the internet link. Deduct 25% from your starting salary for taxes/insurance/etc. Take what is left and divide by 12 to get your monthly take-home pay.

Next, create a budget. Estimate what percentages you will need to spend on the following categories: Housing, Insurance, Food, Utilities, Transportation, Giving/Saving, and Personal. Your percentages must add up to 100% and you must have at least 5% for each listed category.

Apply your estimated percentages to your monthly take-home pay to determine the dollar amount you can spend in each category.

Did your results surprise you in any way? Explain.

Unit 3

Linear Equations:

Linear equations allow you to use math to model the real world. Linear equations can be used to determine the sale price of a hoodie on clearance, the cost of a taxi ride, or how many plants to buy to border a walkway. In the Unit 3 Discussion Board, you will use what you know about linear equations to negotiate a salary.

Initial Response Post:

You are the owner of a business and you must hire a new salesperson. You need to advertise the salary you will offer for the position. To determine the pay package, use the equation P = a + rs where P is the pay, a is the annual salary, r is the commission rate (written as a decimal) earned on sales, and s is sales for the year.

• Choose an annual salary, a, between $40,000 and $70,000.
• Choose a commission rate, r, between 2% and 10%.
• Choose annual sales, s, between $100,000 and $1,000,000.

Calculate the pay package making sure to show the original equation and all steps to solve the equation. Write a few sentences advertising the sales position at your company.

Unit 4 Discussion

Linear Equations and Inequalities:

Linear equations are a great way to determine the pace at which something is changing. The rate of change, or slope, can determine how quickly something is increasing or decreasing.

Initial Response Post:

You are on the local zoning council in your city. The council needs to determine how rapidly the population in your city is increasing or decreasing. This will allow the council to determine the future needs of the city. You are going to determine the rate of change in population of your city. Include the name of your city and state in your post.

• Do an internet search to find the population of your city in 2015. Write this as an ordered pair (2015, population).
• Find the current population of your city. Write this as an ordered pair (current year, current population).
• Use the slope formula to determine the rate of increase/decrease, or slope, of a line drawn between the points that represent the population of 2015 and the current population. Round your answer to two decimal places. Show all the steps you used to arrive at this answer.

Is the population of your city increasing or decreasing? Does the rate of increase or decrease seem high, low, or somewhere in between? Use the rate of increase or decrease to make a recommendation to the council of your city on what the future needs of your city might be.

Unit 5 Discussion

Consumer Math:

Being involved in your local community is important for a variety of reasons. It affords you the opportunity to connect with, help, and strengthen the lives of others. It can give you a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment as you form bonds with your neighbors. If you find a need in your community, it is a good idea to collect data regarding that need. The data may reinforce your idea that there is a need or it may even point you in a different direction of need. Using a data-driven approach to solve a community problem will help you be successful.

Initial Response Post:

For the Unit 5 Discussion Board, you will write and post an essay about civic participation. Propose a community program that you would like to kick start. Choose something you are passionate about: health care, sports, politics, education, community outreach, crime prevention, beautification, animals, etc. It can be something you do once or something you do on an ongoing basis.

Your 250 word minimum essay should include:

• A brief overview of the community program you would like to kick start.
• Proposed budget percentages for your program to help prepare for fundraising (administrative costs, supplies, rent, advertising, etc.).
• Proposed number of volunteers needed for your program. Also calculate the percentage of volunteers based on total number of people in the community (number of volunteers ÷ population of community).
• Estimated percentage of people (or animals) in the community that would benefit from the program.

Every piece of writing should have an introduction, body, and conclusion. A good way to plan this particular reflective essay is to write an introduction to the essay. Next, write at least three body paragraphs. Finish with your conclusion paragraph.

Your essay and outside sources for this essay need to be cited in proper APA format. You can find numerous APA resources in the Academic Success Center Reference Library on the Research, Citation, and Plagiarism page. https://campus2.purdueglobal.edu/page/using-sources

Your essay should include a highly developed purpose and viewpoint; it should also be written in Standard English and demonstrate exceptional content, organization, style, grammar, and mechanics. There should be no evidence of plagiarism. If you are unsure about what constitutes plagiarism, please review the plagiarism policy.

Unit 6 Discussion

Consumer Math

When you start saving for retirement can have a huge impact on your lifestyle once you retire.

Initial Response Post:

Open the Investment Calculator.

• Enter an amount between $100 and $500 that you think you can afford to save each month for retirement into the spreadsheet.
• Calculate how many years it will be until you reach age 67. Enter this amount into the spreadsheet.
• Choose an interest rate between 1% and 7% and enter it into the spreadsheet.
• Add 10 years to your previous age calculation to determine how much more you could have accumulated if you started 10 years ago.

The investment calculator will show you how much you can save if you invest today and how much you could have accumulated if you had started your investing 10 years ago. In your post, list the amounts you chose and calculated. Also state the results of your two investments.

How much more would you have for your retirement if you had started saving 10 years ago? Did the results surprise you in any way? Explain. Do you think the amounts you have calculated will be enough to retire on?

Unit 7 Discussion

The Metric System

When you plan for a long trip, one thing to consider is your gas budget. You can use the measuring techniques from this unit to determine how much you will spend on gas for a trip.

Initial Response Post:

Congratulations! You are graduating from Purdue Global and plan to participate in the graduation ceremony in Indianapolis. The United States has just converted to the metric system and you need to plan your trip.

1. State your current city.
2. Determine the number of kilometers between your current city and Indianapolis, Indiana for a round trip. (Change the settings on your favorite online mapping service from miles to kilometers).
3. A popular mid-size SUV has a fuel efficiency of 11.7 L of gas per 100 km driven. Multiply the number of kilometers you have to drive by 11.7 / 100 to determine the number of liters of gas you will need to purchase for your trip.
4. Convert your result from #2 above from km to m. Convert your result from #3 above from L to hL.

Discuss what you think would be the hardest to get used to when planning trips if the United States would convert to the metric system.

Unit 9 Discussion

Probability

Probability originated from the study of games of chance. Games of chance can involve coins, dice, playing cards, a game spinner, etc. For this discussion, you will conduct an experiment using a coin, and then use the results of the experiment to learn more about probability and odds.

Initial Response Post

Your friend Jacob goes by the mantra “tails never fails”. You are going to use this Discussion to test this theory.

Name your favorite musician, actor, author or artist and do an internet search to find his or her age. Flip a coin one time for each year the person is old. If s/he is 43, flip the coin 43 times. Record the number of tails you obtain.

Use your results to state the empirical probability that the coin will land on tails expressed as a fraction, a decimal, and a percentage. Round your answers to two decimal places, if necessary.

Based on your experiment, did you find that “tails never fails”? Explain the difference between theoretical and empirical probability to your friend Jacob. In your explanation, state the theoretical probability of getting a tail when flipping a coin and compare it to the empirical results you got from your experiment.

Review an example of an initial response for this Discussion.

Unit 10 Discussion

Statistics

In today’s world you are inundated with statistics. Being able to understand the terminology and sort through the data in a way that gives you an accurate picture of the results is an important skill to have.

Initial Response Post

You are searching for a home in your area. A realtor has given you the median home price for the area. You would like to determine whether the mean, median, or mode home price best represents home prices in your area.

Find a website that will allow you to search home prices in your area using specific criteria. Choose at least three criteria (number of bedrooms, square footage, lot size, garage size etc.) to narrow your search and find the prices of at least 10 homes. Do not use price as one of the criteria as you need a variety of prices to come to a conclusion about housing prices in the area.

• List the criteria you chose.
• List the prices of the homes that you found (include the URL in your post).
• Calculate the mean, median, and mode of your home prices showing all steps used.

Explain which of the three measurements you feel best represents the home prices in your area and why.