Maths in Everyday Life

There are several examples you can use discuss here. One example that is often confused is how credit cards work. Up here in Canada, credit cards charge 19% interest, and they make money by relying on compounding the interest. The term “compound interest” means that any interest charges are added to the principal (which is the amount you originally borrowed) so that your debt grows exponentially.

If you have a $100 debt and it accrues 19% interest every month, then the first month you will be charged 19 dollars (100 x 0.19). With compound interest, that 19 dollars is added to your original debt, so now you have $119 of debt. The second month you are again charged 19% interest, which this time comes out to $22.61 (119 x 0.19), so now you have $141.61 of debt.

These days, most credit cards compound interest on a daily basis, not monthly. For example, let’s say you have a revolving balance of $100 on your credit card, and your daily interest rate is 0.63% (19%/30). Multiply 100 x 0.063, therefore you now owe 100.63 the first day. For the next day, you owe 100.63 * 0.063, therefore you now owe $101.26 on the second day if you haven't paid it.

Hope this helped.

Excellent, thank you If anybody has any other suggestions that would be wonderful!

Car dealerships do this a lot; they use misleading graphs to sell their product. In fact, this could be any business trying to sell an idea.

They do this by using uneven scales; for instance, the scale does not start from zero. The graph may even lack a heading or a viable explanation. For example, in the graph below, the gap between 0 and 9000 is equal to the gap between 9000 and 9500. Hence this is a misleading graph.



A graph is misleading graph when it provides only part of the information, or displays comparisons that are not based on all of the information.

Thank you so much!

You're welcome sir