MATH 102 FALL 2009
Mathematics for Everyday Life

Hunter College Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Text: Using and Understanding Mathematics: A Quantitative Reasoning Approach, Jeffrey Bennett and William Briggs, Fourth Edition, Addison-Wesley.

The webpage: The webpage for this course is

http://math.hunter.cuny.edu/thompson/MATH102

The second quiz will be on Monday, November 9, and will cover Chapters 5 and 7.

Here are some exercises for you to do. You will submit some subset or variation of this list on the CourseCompass page:

• Assignment One, due 9/14: 4A/23,25,31,34,52, 4B/41,43,46,54,62.
• Assignment Two, due 9/22: 4C/45,46,49,50,52,53,54,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64.
• Assignment Three, due 9/29: 4D/23,24,25,27,30,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,47,48
• Assignment Four, due 10/5: 5A/25-28,31-33,37,39-44,46-47.
• Assighment Five, due 11/9: 7A/23-30, 31-38,39-48
  7B/21-25,37-40,45,46,49,50,55,56
  7E/33-40,57-64.

Course Goals: The goals of this course are to strengthen your critical thinking and quantitative skills and demonstrate the relevance and importance of mathematics in everyday life. Students will learn how to model real world problems with mathematics and solve them. Some of the topics included are personal finance, statistical reasoning, population growth, voting theory.

Syllabus:

• Chapter Four, Sections A, B, C, D: Personal Finance, Compound Interest, Savings and Investments, Loan Payments, Credit Cards, Mortgages, Income Taxes.
• Chapter Five, Sections A, B, C, D, E: Statistical Reasoning, Statistical Tables and Graphs, the Presentation of Statistics in the Media, Correlation and Causality
• Chapter Seven, Sections A, B, C, D, E: Probability, Assessing Risk, Law of Large Numbers
• Chaper Eight, Sections A, B, C, D: Exponential Growth and Decay, Half Life, Population Growth, Logarithmic Scales
• Chapter Twelve, A, B: Voting Theory, Mathematics and Politics

Grading: There will be three quizzes and one final exam. Homework will be assigned and collected on a regular basis. We will use MyMathLab, the online homework system offered by the textbook publisher.