Hance French

ABSOLUTE VALUES
David uses his online music store gift card (given below) to buy an
album of songs by his favorite band.

Find the negative number that represents the change in the balance on
David's card after his purchase.
Explain how absolute value would be used to express that number in
this situation.
Solution :
Step 1 :
Lett us find the negative integer that represents the change in the
balance.That is -$10
The balance is decreased by $10, so use a negative number.
That is, the balance changed by -$10.
Step 2 :
Use the number line to find the absolute value of -$10.
–10 is 10 units from 0 on the number line.

The absolute value of -$10 is $10, or | -10 | = 10.

Step 3 :
Use the absolute value to describe the change in David's balance.
The balance on David's card decreased by $10.

Applications of Exponential Functions

The best thing about exponential functions is that they are so
useful in real world situations. Exponential functions are used
to model populations, carbon date artifacts, help coroners
determine time of death, compute investments, as well as
many other applications.
1. Population
Many times scientists will start with a certain number of
bacteria or animals and watch how the population grows. For
example, if the population doubles every 5 days, this can be
represented as an exponential function. Most population
models involve using the number e. To learn more about e,
Population models can occur two ways. One way is if we are
given an exponential function. The second way involves coming
up with an exponential equation based on information given.
Let’s look at each of these separately.
:
i. The population of a city is P = 250,342e0.012t where t = 0
represents the population in the year 2000.
a. Find the population of the city in the year 2010.
To find the population in the year 2010, we need to let t = 10 in
our given equation.
P = 250,342e0.012(10) = 250,342e0.12 = 282,259.82
Since we are dealing with the population of a city, we normally
round to a whole number, in this case 282,260 people.
b. Find the population of the city in the year 2015.
To find the population in the year 2015, we need to let t = 15.
P = 250,342e0.012(15) = 250,342e0.18 = 299,713.8
We’ll round this answer to 299,714 people.
c. Find when the population will be 320,000.
We know the population in the year 2015 is almost 300,000
from our work in part (b). So it makes sense that the answer
has to be higher than 2015. Remember that P in the equation
represents the population value, which we are given to be
320,000. Only now we do not know the time value t. The
equation we need to solve is
320,000 = 250,342e0.012(t)
To review solving exponential equation, click here.

So it will take between 20 and 21 years for the population to

reach 320,000. This means between the years 2020 and 2021
the population will be 320,000.
Summary: Before we do the next example, let’s look at a
general form for population models. Most of the time, we start
with an equation that looks like
P = Poekt
 P represents the population after a certain amount of
time
 Po represents the initial population or the population at
the beginning
  k represents the growth (or decay) rate
t represents the amount of time
 Remember that e is not a variable, it has a numeric value.
We do not replace it with information given to us in the
problem.

Using Logarithms in the Real World

Logarithms are everywhere. Ever use the following phrases?
 6 figures
 Double digits
 Order of magnitude
 Interest rate
You're describing numbers in terms of their powers of 10, a logarithm.
And an interest rate is the logarithm of the growth in an investment.
Surprised that logarithms are so common? Me too. Most attempts at
Math In the Real World (TM) point out logarithms in some arcane
formula, or pretend we're geologists fascinated by the Richter Scale.
"Scientists care about logs, and you should too. Also, can you imagine a
world without zinc?"
Math expresses concepts with notation like "ln" or "log". Finding "math
in the real world" means encountering ideas in life and seeing how they
could be written with notation. Don't look for the literal symbols! When
was the last time you wrote a division sign? When was the last time you
chopped up some food?
 Ok, ok, we get it: what are logarithms about?
Logarithms find the cause for an effect, i.e the input for some output
A common "effect" is seeing something grow, like going from $100 to
$150 in 5 years. How did this happen? We're not sure, but the
logarithm finds a possible cause: A continuous return of ln(150/100) / 5
= 8.1% would account for that change. It might not be the actual cause
(did all the growth happen in the final year?), but it's a smooth average
we can compare to other changes.
By the way, the notion of "cause and effect" is nuanced. Why is 1000
bigger than 100?
 100 is 10 which grew by itself for 2 time periods (10 · 10)
 1000 is 10 which grew by itself for 3 time periods (10 · 10 · 10)
We can think of numbers as outputs (1000 is "1000 outputs") and
inputs ("How many times does 10 need to grow to make those
outputs?"). So,
1000 outputs > 100 outputs
because
3 inputs > 2 inputs
Or in other words:
log(1000) > log(100)
Why is this useful?
Logarithms put numbers on a human-friendly scale.
Large numbers break our brains. Millions and trillions are "really big"
even though a million seconds is 12 days and a trillion seconds is 30,000
 years. It's the difference between an American vacation year and the
entirety of human civilization.
The trick to overcoming "huge number blindness" is to write numbers
in terms of "inputs" (i.e. their power base 10). This smaller scale (0 to
100) is much easier to grasp:
 power of 0 = 100 = 1 (single item)
 power of 1 = 101 = 10
 power of 3 = 103 = thousand
 power of 6 = 106 = million
 power of 9 = 109 = billion
 power of 12 = 1012 = trillion
 power of 23 = 1023 = number of molecules in a dozen grams of
carbon
 power of 80 = 1080 = number of molecules in the universe
A 0 to 80 scale took us from a single item to the number of things in the
universe. Not too shabby.
Logarithms count multiplication as steps
Logarithms describe changes in terms of multiplication: in the examples
above, each step is 10x bigger. With the natural log, each step is "e"
(2.71828...) times more.
When dealing with a series of multiplications, logarithms help "count"
them, just like addition counts for us when effects are added.