Case Study : Managing a Sale

Teaching mathematics in a high school and in a community college in the New York City, I have noticed that students grasp mathematical concepts more quickly and understand them better when a connection between the concept and the world of business is established. Students were visibly more interested and involved when business applications were presented first, laying the groundwork for technological applications and for the introduction of further theoretical concepts. This observation, well known to mathematics instructors, deserves further research. This paper aims to show how the business approach can be used in teaching quadratic functions and parabolas: a topic encountered at every level of mathematics and one with a wide range of applications. It will be shown how business information may be presented in a classroom to improve students’ understanding of the topic. The paper assumes that students have had some practice in quadratic functions and graphing parabolas.