Privilege and Power: Mathematical Modeling and Money
For this project, we explored different real world models like credit scores, rent vs. mortgage, and payday loans. Not only did we explore them mathematically, but we also explored them to see what is most affordable, if they should be legal, how they contribute the cycle of poverty, etc. Hence the Power & Privilege. In groups of three we researched the topic, how it affects people and its significance, and I also created two codes using Python that relate to our topic.
The topic that my group and I chose was Financing College. My job was the Programming lead, so my main role was creating codes using Python that related back to our topic. We decided to research this topic because its something that most of us will have to tackle in the near future.
There is a lot of controversy on whether or not it's worth it to even go to college, especially accounting for time and money needed to attend. There are two main concepts we talked about. The Accumulation of Wealth and The Cycle of Poverty. The Accumulation of Wealth is when generations of families or certain people keep making more money, where as the Cycle of Poverty is when a generation or a certain group of people never break out of poverty because they can't afford to. Theres no doubt, college can be expensive. And what seems to happen a lot is people with educated parents are more likely to go to college, and they are abel to find a higher paying job with a degree, which continues The Accumulation of Wealth. People who don't have educated parents seem to not have the money to go to college either, and continue The Cycle of Poverty as they try to find a job without a form of higher education.
College is a great was to break The Cycle of Poverty, as its a way for people without money to still get a higher education to get a higher paying job, and scholarships and grants can help with that.
The first code I created calculated how much money you would need to take out for either 1 year or 4 years of college based on a few variables like scholarships, tuition costs, and housing costs. The second code I created used a while loop to calculate how long it would take to pay off a college loan based on interest rate and monthly payment cost.
The topic that my group and I chose was Financing College. My job was the Programming lead, so my main role was creating codes using Python that related back to our topic. We decided to research this topic because its something that most of us will have to tackle in the near future.
There is a lot of controversy on whether or not it's worth it to even go to college, especially accounting for time and money needed to attend. There are two main concepts we talked about. The Accumulation of Wealth and The Cycle of Poverty. The Accumulation of Wealth is when generations of families or certain people keep making more money, where as the Cycle of Poverty is when a generation or a certain group of people never break out of poverty because they can't afford to. Theres no doubt, college can be expensive. And what seems to happen a lot is people with educated parents are more likely to go to college, and they are abel to find a higher paying job with a degree, which continues The Accumulation of Wealth. People who don't have educated parents seem to not have the money to go to college either, and continue The Cycle of Poverty as they try to find a job without a form of higher education.
College is a great was to break The Cycle of Poverty, as its a way for people without money to still get a higher education to get a higher paying job, and scholarships and grants can help with that.
The first code I created calculated how much money you would need to take out for either 1 year or 4 years of college based on a few variables like scholarships, tuition costs, and housing costs. The second code I created used a while loop to calculate how long it would take to pay off a college loan based on interest rate and monthly payment cost.
I actually really enjoyed this project. I enjoyed how we were exploring something that had real world application, things that I will eventually run into in my life, some that I didn't know much about before. But I also was able to prove my skills with programming. This is something that I had never even worked with before hand. And if I wasn't able to experience it through this project I don't think I would have ever even tried it. And turns out, I actually enjoy doing it. It's a different type of math that I didn't know even existed. I took on something new and had to have a lot of faith in myself to get it done. I think I preformed well as a group member and made sure to always get things in on time. The Exhibition was also very successful and I felt confident talking to people about all aspects of my project.