This site contains materials for an Excel-based business math class developed at CU Boulder.
The class is a hands-on mathematical problem solving class, using business applications, working with data in the spreadsheet program Microsoft Excel. Students will develop three skills:
Here are the math and Excel skills that the course covers. All students enrolled in the course will need to bring a laptop computer with Microsoft Excel to class every day.
MATH 1112 a novel course, and most students will not have had a course like it before. We do expect that most students will have experience with the major mathematical topics in the course (for example, unit conversions, linear and exponential growth models, and probability). The course provides an opportunity to learn Excel and to apply math in real problems. If students are very good with Excel (at a minimum, fluent with writing draggable formulas) and have strong math skills, an exemption exam is available as an alternative way to satisfy the Leeds math requirement. Details on what to bring, what to expect, how to prepare, and how to sign up are on this Leeds Math Requirement Exemption Exam page.
I developed this site to share sample course materials with the outside world, including prospective students, other people interested in mathematics education for business students, and students studying for the exemption exam.
If you are enrolled in the class, please make sure you are getting the official versions of the materials from the course Canvas site, not from this site.
Check out the modules in the course by clicking on topics below. The first few topics have more detail posted. The others are more bare bones, but all the exercises and data files are present.
Let's get something out of the way up front: the issue of whether you think you are a "math person" or "not a math person."
If you like math, then we hope you will love this class. You will learn some really useful tools and get a chance to exercise your mathematical problem-solving muscles outside the bounds of a textbook. The math in this class won't be more advanced in the sense of the typical academic sequences, but it will be challenging.
If you don't like math, we ALSO hope you will love this class. We hope you will reconsider the "not a math person" label. Perhaps once you see what kinds of problems you can solve, you will feel motivated to master the topics and tools. Because this class isn't just the next step in the typical academic sequence, it can serve as a fresh start for you. Maybe you will surprise yourself.