Mathematics You Can Use!

In honor of PI DAY, (3/14) we bring you some mathematics you can use.

Every year at Christmas, we struggle with how much to spend on each person and not set our credit cards on fire.  Luckily there is a mathematical way to figure this out that is fairly easy to do. You might want to use a calculator to help you crunch the numbers, but here we go.  The first thing you need to do is list every person you are going to buy a gift for. In my fictional example I have 11 people I am buying gifts for:

Wife

Mom

Dad

Sister

Sister's Significant Other

Aunt

Uncle

Grandfather

Friend 1

Friend 2

Friend 3

Friend 4

Next assign each person a number from 1 to 10 that corresponds to how important a gift is for them. You can use numbers more than once and you don't have to use each number from 1 to 10. 

So:

10 Wife

 8  Mom

 8  Dad

 7 Sister

 6 Sister's Significant Other

 3 Aunt

 3 Uncle

 7 Grandfather

 3  Friend 1

 2  Friend 2

 1  Friend 3

 2  Friend 4

Don't judge me, these people are fictitious. Now add up all the numbers you just assigned. In my example, that totals 60.  Next divide the total budget you want to spend for these gifts by the number you just got. Your calculator might come in handy here.  I have $800 to spend for gifts, so I divide this by 60 (my total from the list above). This number, $13.33, is my unit gift cost. Friend number 3, then would get a gift worth about $13. For everyone else, I multiply their number by $13.33 to get their gift amount. For your sister, that would be $13.33 times 7, which is about $93. Your wife would get a gift worth about  $133.30.  If I use these values, my total gift giving would be about $800.  Ta da!  My gift giving is set and I haven't broken the bank. Isn't math wonderful? 

Finally, in honor of Pi Day, one of my favorite math jokes,

What did zero say to eight?  Hey, nice belt.