RWM101: Foundations of Real World Math

Our cannoli story has a fascinating answer that speaks to some deep mathematics first explored in the late 1800s and re-explored in the 1980s (thanks to some chicken nuggets from Mcdonald's). We use math in our daily activities, and it plays an important role in nearly every career you can imagine: from business to cooking, farming, medicine, and beyond. It is no surprise that many call math a universal language: people across the globe use the same numbers, formulas, and equations to help them navigate the world.

In this course, we study essential math concepts that will enrich your understanding of the world and illuminate a larger, mathematically-rich universe. The three courses in the Real World Math series discuss basic algebra and geometry topics and show you how to apply these concepts to everyday life.

The material focuses on how math relates to common real-world situations, transactions, and phenomena, such as personal finance, business, and the sciences. This real-world focus will help you grasp the importance of the mathematical concepts you encounter in these courses and understand why you need quantitative and algebraic skills to succeed in college and your day-to-day life.

For example, fractions allow us to tell interesting and useful stories that involve measurement, ratios, and proportions. Decimals and percentages are merely fractions in disguise. They help us make financial decisions and measure or compare various types of data. This course will help clarify the different ways we represent data visually, such as with a bar or line graph.

We also examine how to interpret data – no matter how it is presented. This skill will help you read a chart that outlines the current mortgage interest rate or make sense of the latest statistics for your fantasy football league. Let's not forget our coffee-infused chocolate cannolis. You will use addition, subtraction, and multiplication to answer her question. However, we will not help you deliver the bad news to your professor-customer.

A note on numbers. Before we begin, let's clarify what we mean by the word numbers. We usually refer to a quantity, such as five, seven, or 10. But mathematicians have created four different categories or types of numbers.

Here is a summary of four types of numbers (with the fancy symbols mathematicians use to refer to them):

• $\mathbb{N}$ Natural Numbers: all positive whole numbers: $\mathbb{N}=\left \{ 1,2,3,4,5,... \right \}$
• $\mathbb{Z}$ Integers: all positive and negative whole numbers (and zero, too!):$\mathbb{Z}=\left \{..., -3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3,... \right \}$
• $\mathbb{Q}$ Rational Numbers: all positive and negative fractions (including integers): $\mathbb{Q}=\left \{a/b\:where\:a\:and\:b\:are\:integers \right \}$
• $\mathbb{R}$ Real Numbers: all possible positive and negative numbers (including ): $\mathbb{R}$