Monthly Archives: November 2017

Demand Planning

Recently in Discovering Maths we looked at the maths within supply chains and logistics. The area which I found most interesting in this was demand planning. Demand planning is a multi-step supply chain management process used to create a prediction of sales for a particular period of time (TechTarget, 2017). Used effectively demand planning can help business to improve the accuracy of their predictions, show when sales of a product are at its highest and lowest and therefore enhance the profitability of products (TechTarget, 2017).

In the workshop we had a go at creating our own demand planning sheet for a business that we had made up. At the start of the first quarter, which for any business runs from April to June, we had a budge of £5,000. The goods we had to buy from were Christmas selection boxes, champagne (bottle), soft drink (2l bottle), beer (x4cans), whole frozen turkeys, ice cream wafers (box of 10), bunch of bananas, celebration luxury hampers, crisps (x12multi pack), sherbet dib dabs, bread (loaf), milk (1l), tins of beans (x4), luxury biscuit selection, premium durian. The aim of our demand planning was to do exactly what TechTarget (2017) said, we were to work out which products we believed would be at their peak in terms of sales during this quarter in order to generate the most sales.

We continued our demand planning into quarter 2 (July – September), quarter 3 (October – December) and finally quarter 4 (January – March). Each quarter we made a profit which we were able to carry over into the next to spend on more stock and again try to generate more profits.

As you can see from the photos, every quarter we focused on what the season was like at this time, for example during the summer we bought ice cream cones and soft drinks, in winter we bought section boxes and luxury hampers. This however was our downfall as we didn’t consider the products that stayed reasonably high in terms of sales all year round, the biggest of these being baked beans. Due to not considering these kinds of products we ended up coming away with the lowest profit compared with the rest of the class, however we were still positive in that our demand planning did make us a profit.

The sales of the baked beans got me thinking about other products that sell well throughout the whole year, so I decided to look into this. It was very difficult to fine exactly which products make to most profit for businesses as there are lots of other aspects to consider such as shipping cost and supplier costs (Simpson, 2014). However, I did read that in the last year the supermarket chain Tescos’s profits have rose considerably compared with what they have predicted (Cox, 2017). In the Independent’s article a spokesperson for Tesco said that one of the main reasons for the rise in their profits was because of their exclusive fresh food brand (Cox, 2017). This surprised me as supermarkets cannot carry over any fresh food stock into the following quarter due to their shelf life and so many of these items need to be written off. For the supermarkets this means that they still have to pay the shipping and supplier cost even though it is likely the will not sell any all of the fresh items and therefore make no profit to take forward. However, with the fresh food products being a large contributing factor in the considerable rise in Tesco’s products it seems to me like the customers here love their fresh foods.

This is an activity I would be liketo use with a class in the upper school of primary. This is something which I think they would find enjoyable and would help them develop their knowledge in areas of mathematics such as money and percentages.

References:

Cox, J. (2017) Tesco Reports £1.28bn Annual Profit and First Full Year of Growth Since 2010. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/tesco-reuslts-earnings-128bn-annual-profit-first-full-year-growth-since-2010-booker-a7679401.html (Accessed on: 24^th November 2017)

Simpson, E. (2014) The Hidden World of Supplying a Supermarket. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29629742 (Accessed on: 24^th November)

TeachTarget (2017) Demand Planning. Available at: http://searcherp.techtarget.com/definition/demand-planning (Accessed on 27th November 2017)

Maths and Medicine

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Medicine. It is something we all hate but without a doubt something we all have to take at some point in our lives. However, mathematical knowledge is something you and any medical professional need to have before administering any kind of medicine.

For some medicines it is quite easy to follow the dosage intrusions, for example with paracetamol you are advised to take between 1 and 2 500mg tablets every 4 hours within a 24 hour period. This means that the maximum does of paracetamol for an adult is 8 500mg tablets in 24 hours, ensuring there is the advised 4 hour cap between (NHS Paracetamol for Adults, No Date). In order to prescribe yourself with paracetamol you must have mathematical knowledge about quantities, so how many is 2 and also a good understanding of time. To stop yourself from overdosing you will need to know how long 4 hours is, as well as figuring at what time these 4 hours will have past for you to take another does, if you require it.

For children, paracetamol dose are different to adults as the dosage changes by age and children receive their paracetamol through a liquid syrup. This image from NHS Paracetamol for Children shows the different ages and the dosage that goes with this.

Even though you receive a measuring spoon with liquid paracetamol, it is not known what age the child who is going to be taking it is and so it standard to give a 5ml spoon with a 2.5ml on the other end. This mean that if you child is 8 – 10 years they will require 7.5ml, you need to know to give them a 5ml dose and then 2.5ml, straight after each other in order to make that required does of 7.5ml. Similarly, with a 10ml does you need to know to give the child two 5ml dose in order to make a 10ml. This mathematical knowledge is essential to ensure that you do not give the child an overdose and they end up in a serious condition.

When a patient is in hospital they trust the medical professionals to help them get better and so this also means that they trust that the medical professionals have sufficient mathematical knowledge to ensure they are not given an overdose or not enough medication to help them feel better.

Some of the data medical professionals have to record look a bit like this:

Now I’m not going to pretend I know what these charts mean or what they can predict purely because I’m studying to be a teacher and not a medical professional. However, what I do know is that it requires a lot of mathematical knowledge to be able to create these charts, furthermore it is essential that the medical professionals have a deep understanding of what the maths is telling them and be able to interpret this into a diagnosis such as high blood pressure.

Medical professionals often have to use a person height and weight to calculate how much of a specific medicine they can receive (Hothersall, 2016). For example, say I am in hospital and require some medication, the dosage I receive based on my height of 4ft 11 and a weight of 7 stone will be smaller a smaller dose than someone who is 6ft 10, weighing 11 stone. If I was to be given the same dose of this specific medicine as the person who is 6ft 10 weighing 11 stone, it is most likely I will become more ill than what I was originally (Hothersal, 2016).

In the future I plan to take a greater interested in administering medicine and how much mathematical knowledge it requires to do so. I have been fascinated by the variety of areas of mathematics that can be used in medicine and I would like to deepen my understanding of this.

References:

Hothersall, E (2016) Numeracy: Every contact counts (or something) [PowerPoint Presentation]. ED21006 Discovering Mathematics. Available at: https://mydundee.ac.uk (Accessed on: 13th November 2017)

NHS Paracetamol for Adults (Not Date). Available at: https://beta.nhs.uk/medicines/paracetamol-for-adults (Accessed on: 13^th November 2017)

NHS Paracetamol for Children (No Date). Available at: https://beta.nhs.uk/medicines/paracetamol-for-children (Accessed on: 13^th November 2017)

Maths and Music

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Are maths and music connected? This is a question I never thought I would ask myself and the answer was even more surprising… yes, they are!

At first I must say that I did not see the link between the two. In my opinion I view maths as a very structured subject. It has set formulas and for each question only one set answer, something in which music is not. Music, to me, is a way to express your feelings and emotions; it is free for you to do what you like with, you are free to make your own styles, there is not set structures and not set answers. However, even though musicians do create their own music they use maths to help them develop, express and communicate their ideas (Shah, 2010)

There are many aspects mathematical knowledge that musicians use when playing and creating music, one of the simplest aspects is being able to count, for example a musician needs to be able to count the number of beats in a bar. A musician also uses their mathematical knowledge when looking at rhythm, scales, intervals, patterns, symbols, time signatures, overtones and pitch (American Mathematical Society, 2017).

Maths is not only used to help musicians to create and play music, it is also used to help them to tune and play their instruments. Mathematics is able to explain how strings vibrate at certain frequencies and that sound ways are used to describe these mathematical theories (Shah, 2010).

However, it is not just string instruments such as violins and cellos that use their frequencies to help with tuning and playing, a pianist will also do this. But the maths is not always enough and so a pianist will use the frequencies along with their knowledge of the sound of the keys in order to tune the piano (Sangster, 2017).

Seeing first-hand the ways in which maths and music connect is something I have enjoyed. This has made me consider the possibility of using music as a way of explaining mathematical concepts such as patterns and sequences in my teaching practice. I believe that doing this well bring an element of enjoyment as well as a large amount of engagement from pupils as this would be an interactive activity that could be used with a variety of ages and stages within the primary school.

References:

American Mathematical Society (2017) Mathematics & Music Available at: http://www.ams.org/samplings/math-and-music (Accessed on: 6th November 2017)

Sangster, P. (2017) Discovering Maths: Music and Mathematics [PowerPoint Presentation]. ED21006 Discovering Mathematics. Available at: https://mydundee.ac.uk (Accessed on: 6^th November 2017)

Shah, S. (2010) An Exploration of the Relationship between Mathematics and Music. Available at: http://eprints.ma.man.ac.uk/1548/1/covered/MIMS_ep2010_103.pdf (Accessed on: 6^th November 2017)