Reflective Writing for Population Project

1. Give some other examples of real-life situations that are modeled by linear functions.
Linear equations can be applied to a wide variety of fields. Physics and chemists may use
linear equations to model the steady change of temperature when melting a substance and
they may also use it to model how much of two ingredients you need to mix together into a
solution to make the solution supersaturated. You may also use linear equations in the
subject of History to create a line of best fit equation from a graph that describes the
adoption of automobiles in the 1920s and you could also use linear equations to create a line
of best fit equation for the increase and decrease of a persons heartrate when they exercise.
In addition, there are several everyday scenarios that you can use linear equations for. You
can use linear functions to model how far an object will travel y in any given amount of time
x if it moves at a constant speed, such as a car going down the highway at a constant speed of
70 miles per hour. By finding the amount of hours the car has traveled (x) and finding the
corresponding y-coordinate on the graph, you can see how many hours you have traveled in
that period of time and how many more miles you can expect to travel if you keep traveling
at the same speed. For example, if you are traveling 70 miles per hour and have traveled 1
hour, you have traveled 70 miles total. If you plan to keep driving for another hour at the
same speed, you can expect to have traveled 140 miles in 2 hours.
You can also use a linear function to see what your profit on an item will be if you sell x
amount of units. For example, say that your expenses of buying some computers to sell are
3,000 dollars and that you plan on selling each computer at about $300 dollars. If you were
to graph it, your y-intercept would be -3,000 and for every x amount of computers that you
sell, you will gain $300 dollars, which is the slope. The x-intercept of the graph is the
amount of units you need to sell in order to break even, which, after substituting 0 in for y
and solving for x, looks to be about 10 computers. When the graph crosses over to Quadrant
I on the graph, where all of the values of the graph are positive, you can then see how much
profit you are projected to earn if you keep selling computers indefinitely. It would
definitely be handy know when you can expect to break even and when you can expect to
receive profit because you dont want to sell too few computers and lose money.
Linear functions can also be used to determine how much I can expect to pay for my cell
phone bill if my cell phone bill includes a flat fee and then I am charged per minute. If I end
up paying a $10 flat rate and then I am charged 10 cents per minute, I can use 10.00 as my yintercept and .10 for my slope to create the linear function y=.10x+10. If I want to not spend
more than $40 dollars a month on my cell phone bill, I can plug in 40 for y and solve for x
which will give me the amount of minutes I can use without going over my budget, which, if
I plug in 40 for y, I get 300 minutes.

Finally, you can use linear functions to find out how many minutes it will take to fill two
tubs of water if both tubs of water contain the same volume. Say that tub 1 fills up at a rate
of 5 gallons every minute and that tub 2 fills up at a rate of 3 gallons every minute. If both
tubs have a 30 gallon capacity and you want to be able to be there to stop the tap before the
tubs overfill, you can create two linear functions that will model the rate that each tub is
filled and the time when both tubs are expected to be filled to capacity. The linear function
for tub 1 is y=5x (x being in minutes and y being gallons) because tub 1 will be filled with 5
gallons of water for every minute and the linear function for the other tub is y=3x because
tub 2 will be filled with 3 gallons of water for every minute. Note that there are no yintercepts because both of the tubs are completely empty before they are filled (you cant
have negative gallons of water). If you graphed both of these lines on the graph and
pinpointed30 on the y-axis, you can see that tub 1 will fill to capacity in about 10 minutes
and that tub 2 will fill up in about 6 minutes. Alternatively, you could also substitute 30 in
for y in both of the linear functions above and solve each function for x.
2. Describe why it would be important to understand the rate of change of these systems.
You need to know the slope (i.e the rate of change) in linear functions because the slope of a
system is the utmost defining characteristic of the graph. In my first example, say that you at
first thought that speed limit was 70 miles per hour but that the actual speed limit goes up to
80 miles per hour. If you graphed both of these functions on the graph, you would find that
in the time it took you to drive 2 hours you wouldve actually have driven a distance of 160
miles instead of 140. A difference of 20 miles doesnt seem as if it is a huge difference, but
if you found 6 on the x-axis, you would see that you would travel 420 miles in 4 hours if you
drove 70 miles per hour and 480 miles in 4 hours if you drove 80 miles per hour. You
wouldve been able to travel 60 more miles in the same amount of time and, whats worse,
for every hour you drive at 80 miles per hour you are able to travel 10 miles further than you
would at 80 miles per hour. This is why the slope of a graph or a function is so important;
the slope has the tremendous power to change the steepness of your line, which can not only
radically alter the look of the graph, but also the values that the graph contains. It even alters
the look of your function even more than your y-intercept because the y-intercept merely
moves the graph up and down and does not change the angle of the graph like the slope does.
3. Reflect on how this project relates to the real world. How does this project relate to
other classes you have taken? How does this project relate to other aspects of your life?
The subject of population growth is a great concern for other fields of work. For instance,
the subject of population growth is of prime concern for national, state, and local
governments because the government want to ensure that it can provide enough resources for
its people and distribute its services equally. In a hypothetical scenario, if a federal
courthouse can serve 3 million people in Salt Lake City and the population of Salt Lake is
expected to grow 6 million over the next 20 years, you want to be able to set aside enough
money in Salt Lake Citys budget to pay for two new courthouses and to have both of them

operating and functional before the population reaches the predicted level. The same applies
to other important services on the state and local level, as well, such as fire stations, police
stations, and mass transit systems. Doing so will ensure a smooth transition as the
population grows and that no one is even without these services, even for a short period of
time.
It is also a major issue when it comes to the social sciences and ecological sciences. One
may think that the more people there are on earth, the more resources (in the form of
knowledge and labor) mankind will have. However, unchecked population growth can also
cause problems, even on a global scale. We have 7 billion people living in the world today
and, thus far, there are no discernable signs that this massive population increase is slowing.
Humans have a nasty habit of wrecking the environment to gain resources for themselves and
so naturally it follows that if the human population increases, so does the amount of damage
on our environment. Some of this damage is irreversible and if the human population
reaches a certain point where the resources of the earth cannot provide for everyone, the
standard of living and quality of life for many people throughout the world will decrease,
especially in underdeveloped countries. Take China and India, for instance. As you can
easily imagine, the standard of living and quality of life in these nations is considerably
worse compared to developed countries such as the United States and Great Brittan. Both of
these nations are expected to have immense population increases over the next several years.
Thus, the more the population of these nations grow, the more resources are spread thin, the
more that the environment is damaged, and the more that the quality of life for the average
citizen decreases. This has also happened historically, as well. As I have learned in my
World History class this semester, one of the contributing factors that led to the fall of the
Roman Empire was the sharp rise in population due to vast expansion of territories.
This issue matters to me on a personal level because I hate to see people suffer needlessly
and I am a big believer in preserving the rich, natural areas of the world. It also matters to
me because I want my children to live in a beautiful world where they can have the chance to
be prosperous. We need to come up with right now and not a moment too soon because we
may not have the opportunity later on to fix it. The consequences of inaction, the irreparable
damage to the world in which we live, are too great for us to sit idly by.
4. How did this project change the way you think about how algebra can be applied to the
real world/other classes/your life? State what ideas changed and why. If this project did
not change the way you think, write how this project gave further evidence to support
your existing opinion about applying algebra. Be specific.
To be perfectly honest, this project did not change the way I think about algebra because I
already understand the importance of algebra and the many, many ways that algebra can be
used in the real world. A lot of students that I know tend to think of algebra as a series of
long equations that they will probably never use unless their future field of work requires it.
The truth is, though, that math can be used to solve everyday problems and in everyday life,

as long as you keep practicing and honing your skill. This is because nearly anything in real
life can be modeled with an equation, from the curve of a ball thrown into the air to the
spirals found in a pineapple to the motion of the planets. If we are able to model real-life
objects with math, we can then manipulate the math in order to predict what will happen to
that object if we change the values of the variables, we can solve for the variables that we
dont know, and we can predict what will happen to that object in the future. Without math,
we definitely would not know as much as what we know today and we would not be
equipped with the proper tools to find the solutions to the problems we face. After all, math,
at its very core, is solving problems.