Week One 1512

This week in Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers, I learned about "Proportional Reasoning."  This topic was rather exciting to learn about; I am finding that math really is enjoyable and interesting to learn.  The big challenge this week was Compound Interest!  Wow!  I am not sure if learning the formula or figuring out how to use graphing calculator was more challenging!  The two ideas in this particular area of the text involved simple interest and compound interest.  Calculating simple interest really is simple: i=prt.
the amount of interest (i)=the amount of principal (p) x the annual rate of simple interest (r) x the number of years (t).  Quit simple :)

Now enter compound interest!  This equation is rather detailed and when I first looked at it, I was overwhelmed to say the least.

A=the total amount of principal plus interest
P=the principal
r=the annual rate of interest (although in our text, an "i" is used)
n=the number of times the interest is compounded per year
t=the number of years

As I learned these formulas and began to understand the difference between simple interest and compound interest, I was pleasantly surprised, again, that math is basically straight-forward.  I feel that the most difficult portion of this lesson was learning the formulas and how to correctly input the numbers.  Once it clicked, I was able to fly through this information and get it drilled into my head.

My ultimate goal of this math course is to really understand why things work the way they do and not just memorize formulas.  When I look back on my education, especially in elementary and middle school, I feel like I memorized everything without understanding anything.  With the Internet and all the tools that are available within these confines, it would seem that learning math skills should be easier this time around.  I have found YouTube to be very helpful with resources from people who eat, sleep, and breathe math!  Simple and compound interest are now part of my repertoire of valuable information tucked into my brain soon to be used in my own classroom!