Last month, in Honors Pre-Calculus, students were given a car loan project in which they had to apply mathematics to the purchase of a car, something that will most likely happen to them in real life.

This project allowed students to gain a deeper understanding of pre-calculus mathematics by having them apply it to a situation that has happened or will happen to them sometime in the future.

“The main takeaway was for students to use technology and use exponential growth and apply it to a real-world application of buying a car,” math department chair Shelley Godett said.

Godett emphasized the fact that the main takeaway for the project was for her students to find a way to connect their mathematics skills with the real world in the form of purchasing a car. This situation, in most cases, will inevitably occur for each student.

“It showed us how to apply the math that we were learning into the real world and why it matters,” sophomore Nikhil Jha said.

For the activity, students were given a “key” that had a certain budget and down payment. They had to use that information and find a car loan that matched the information that they had. The students then had to fill out a slide describing the car’s information and down payment.

“Usually in math, students don’t understand the value of learning, but with real life connections you can see how math applied to the real world.” sophomore Karishma Setya said.

Students like Setya appreciated the project because it helped pique their interest in mathematics by applying what they learned in class to real life situations. This made math more interesting to them, and as a result, they listened more intently.

The Car Loan Project was very influential to the students in the sense that it helped them improve their math skills by keeping them engaged by teaching them about business in car dealerships.