Mathematics is used in most aspects of daily life. Many of thetop jobs such as business consultants, computer consultants,airline pilots, company directors and a host of others require asolid understanding of basic mathematics, and in some casesrequire a quite detailed knowledge of mathematics. It also playimportant role in business, like Business mathematics bycommercial enterprises to record and manage businessoperations. Mathematics typically used in commerce includeselementary arithmetic, such as fractions, decimals, andpercentages, elementary algebra, statistics and probability.Business management can be made more effective in some casesby use of more advanced mathematics such as calculus, matrixalgebra and linear programming.Commercial organizations use mathematics in accounting,inventory management, marketing, sales forecasting, andfinancial analysis.In academia, "Business Mathematics" includes mathematicscourses taken at an undergraduate level by business students.These courses are slightly less difficult and do not always gointo the same depth as other mathematics courses for peoplemajoring in mathematics or science fields. The two most

common math courses taken in this form are Business Calculusand Business Statistics. Examples used for problems in thesecourses are usually real-life problems from the businessworld.An example of the differences in coursework from abusiness mathematics course and a regular mathematics coursewould be calculus. In a regular calculus course, students wouldstudy trigonometric functions. Business calculus would notstudy trigonometric functions because it would be time-consuming and useless to most business students, exceptperhaps economics majors. Economics majors who plan tocontinue economics in graduate school are strongly encouragedto take regular calculus instead of business calculus, as well aslinear algebra and other advanced math courses.Other subjects typically covered in a business mathematicscurriculum include:Matrix algebraLinear programmingProbability theory

Another meaning of business mathematics, sometimes calledcommercial math or consumer math, is a group of practicalsubjects used in commerce and everyday life. In schools, thesesubjects are often taught to students who are not planning auniversity education. In the United States, they are typicallyoffered in high schools and in schools that grant associate'sdegrees.A U.S. business math course might include a review ofelementary arithmetic, including fractions, decimals, andpercentages. Elementary algebra is often included as well, in the

context of solving practical business problems. The practicalapplications typically include checking accounts, pricediscounts, markups and markdowns, payroll calculations, simpleand compound interest, consumer and business credit, andmortgages.The emphasis in these courses is on computationalskills and their practical application, with practical applicationpredominating. For example, while computational formulas arecovered in the material on interest and mortgages, the use ofprepared tables based on those formulas is also presented andemphasized. Mathematics can provide powerful support forbusiness decisions. In their later business careers, this willmotivate them to consult with mathematicians and employeffective quantitative methods.Mathematics provides many important tools for economics andother business fields. However, our discipline does not profitfrom this work when students (who later become part of thegeneral public) are unaware of its existence. Presenting trivialmathematical applications only makes matters worse, since theyare clearly recognizable as being of little importance. Thisactually diminishes our subject in the eyes of students. Usingcomputers to bring the underlying structure of significantmathematics to undergraduates allows them to appreciate therole that ourSubject can play in their academic work and later lives. Therecognition of its importance by many students each year willcertainly strengthen the position of mathematics in our society.Why do business consultants and directors need to know math?"you may ask. Business is all about selling a product or service tomake money. All transactions within a business have to be

recorded in the Company accounts and quite often involve verylarge sums of money. So for example, you need to be able toestimate the effect of changing numbers in the accounts whentrying to work out your expected performance for next year.Also businesses rely heavily on using percentages, in particularanyone who works as a sales person will need to be quick atmental arithmetic, approximation and in working outpercentages. The more percentage discount you give a customerwhen you sell them a product, the less profit your company willmake (and quite often the less you will be paid!) so it really doespay to know your math.If you work as a sales assistant in many stores you now need tohave the ability to calculate the cost of goods and change thecustomers require without using the till. Businesses like to knowthat you can cope if the machines break down and also theybelieve that you can give better customer service if you canrespond to customers who know their mathematics. This is thestuff of letters which often appear in local newspapers as "…Ibought 2 of the same item at Shop priced at Rs3.00, and gavethe young sales assistant a Rs10 note and a Rs1 coin expectingto get a Rs5 note as change and do my bit to help prevent thestore from running out of change in the till. To my amazementthe sales assistant insisted that I had paid too much, I tried toexplain to no avail but in the end reluctantly took back my Rs1coin and was given 4 more Rs1 coins as change.Finally, there are jobs around where you can escape from usingany math at all - refuse collector, builder's laborer, farm handetc. However, when you invest your hard earned cash in thebank or building society or get a loan - how do you know that

you are not being ripped off? You need to use math to calculatecompound interest rates (to see how much your savings cangrow). You also need to use math to understand the monthlypercentages, which are added to your credit cards or bank loans,or you could end up paying Rs10,000 in 5 year’s time forborrowing Rs2,000 today! This is a good reason to understandmathematics

Criticism on mathematics

Mathematics is not a closed intellectual system, in whicheverything has already been worked out. There is no shortage ofopen problems. Mathematicians publish many thousands ofpapers embodying new discoveries in mathematics every month.Mathematics is not numerology, nor is it accountancy; nor is itrestricted to arithmetic. Pseudomathematics is a form ofmathematics-like activity undertaken outside academia, andoccasionally by mathematicians themselves. It often consists ofdetermined attacks on famous questions, consisting of proof-attempts made in an isolated way (that is, long papers notsupported by previously published theory). The relationship togenerally accepted mathematics is similar to that betweenpseudoscience and real science. The misconceptions involvedare normally based on misunderstanding of the implications ofmathematical rigor; attempts to circumvent the usual criteria forpublication of mathematical papers in a learned journal afterpeer review, often in the belief that the journal is biased against

the author; lack of familiarity with, and thereforeunderestimation of, the existing literature. The case of KurtHeegner's work shows that the mathematical establishment isneither infallible, nor unwilling to admit error in assessing'amateur' work. And like astronomy, mathematics owes much toamateur contributors such as Fermat and Mersenne.‘Modernmathematics’ is indeed boring and devoid of meaning in mostpapers. That’s why I stick to reading the works of the greats likevon Neumann, Wiener, Einstein, and hosts of others. What madethem great? They explain things, and then go on to carry outtremendously complicated calculations. I think the advent ofcalculators and numerical methods has hurt the advance andunderstanding of math to a large degree. However, on the flipside, new symbolic methods allow computations, which are agreat, help and lead to new relations not previously seen, somaybe there is hope yet. But, apart from that fact, I wouldn’t saymodern mathematics is particularly boring. In fact, I think it’sthe second most exciting thing in the universe! The first is, ofcourse, the mathematics of the future. The problem is just thatmost writers of mathematics succeed, against all odds, at makingthe subject seem boring. They’ve developed a lot of methods fordoing this. One is to make the results hard to understand.Another is to not provide enough contexts for people to see whythe results are interesting. A third is to write in a style that hasall the drama and flair of overcooked porridge.

References

• Contemporary Mathematics for Business and Consumers,By Brechner, Robert. (2006).

• The Role of Mathematics in Business Decisions.By Stephen F Keating - 1973

• THE ROLE OF MATHEMATICS AND LOGIC

By Kenneth Ewart Boulding1971

• THE ROLE OF MATHEMATICS IN ECONOMICSJournal of Political Economy, 56, 3 (June 1948): 187-199.