Wednesday nights in my house currently consist of settling down on the sofa at 9pm with a mug of hot chocolate to watch the newest episode of The Apprentice. So finding out we were doing an apprentice-style business simulation I was very excited. Everyone gets caught up in thinking that if they were in The Apprentice they’d know exactly what to do so I was curious to see how well we would actually do in a business style exercise whilst applying our knowledge of the fundamental principles of mathematics.
The rules of the exercise were that in teams of three we each had €5000 to spend each quarter on a various number of items which were: xmas selection boxes, champagne, soft drink, beer, whole frozen turkeys, ice cream wafers, bunch of bananas, celebration luxury hampers, crisps, sherbet dip dabs, bread, milk, tins of beans, luxury biscuit selection and premium durian. We could pick up to 5 items per quarter and any items not sold, if not perishable, could be carried on to the next quarter.
We started off the activity by dividing the items into different categories such as Christmas and summer items so we could decide which items would be best to buy and when. This proved to be a good idea as some items such as xmas selection boxes didn’t sell very well between April- June but 100% of the selection boxes sold between October- December. We stuck with this method throughout the task and it proved to work very well. However it was pointed out to the class at the end that we should have been paying close attention to the difference between the purchase price per unit and the seasonal selling price. For example tins of beans were bought for 25p each but they were sold at a seasonal selling price €2.50 which 10 times more than they were sold for and in January- March 100% of the tins of beans sold. If we had put all our money on the beans we would have come out on top.
There were various mathematical strategies we used during this business simulation. Basic mathematical concepts such as addition, subtraction, division and multiplication were applied to different parts of the simulation. Addition and multiplication was used when deciding how many items we should buy and how much these items would cost. Addition also helped us to keep track of what items we had left and what could be carried over as well as adding on €5000 onto the profit each quarter. Dividing and subtraction were used when figuring how many items were sold and how much profit was made on each item.
Overall we did pretty well in this task we started off with €5000 and ended with €78,771. This task helped me to understand the maths which is used in business situations like this and how without a basic understanding of the fundamental concepts of mathematics this task would be unsolvable. This task could be transferred into the classroom to help pupils see the real life relevance of mathematics as well as sparking their business interests. I really enjoyed the task and the thrill of making money through mathematical concepts but I might not be ready for The Apprentice just yet.
