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Bailey Busse Geometry, Hour 3 Mrs. Wilton November 30, 2013 Mathematics in a Marketing Career One of the top questions a math teacher hears is “when are we going to use this in real life? ” It’s actually a very interesting question. No matter what career field you’re planning on going into, chances are you’ll use some form of math in your Job and daily life. Whether you’re using complex math like an architect will use, or simple math like a cashier would use, math will always continue to be a part of your life.
Personally, I’m interested in pursuing a career in marketing, which uses a large amount of math. Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, with the purpose of selling that product or service. In a marketing career, I would use things such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, and percentages. Many of these types of math may seem very simple and easy, but all of these are put together to do many complicated things that go into the daily workings of a marketing Job.
For example, you would have to be able to complete a standard sales check to 100% accuracy, or compare and analyze a competition’s financial plan. These use more than one form of math to get the task at hand completed. With these forms of math being used in the every day tasks, you must have the base knowledge of these in order to use them. This means not only taking your required high school classes, but taking many extra math classes when you’re in college. In order to become a marketer you must have a bachelor’s degree from college.
You are also required to have some form of foundation in the mathematics of college algebra, trigonometry, geometry, mathematical economics, calculus, and statistics. These forms of math are almost always used in a marketer’s job. Marketers usually have tools of some sort to help make their math heavy Job easier. For example, many people working with marketing will use Microsoft Excell or other spreadsheet programs of some sort to not only help calculate math, but to spread out their work and help organize what they are doing.
Even with these tools hough, a person pursuing marketing must still know what formulas to enter and basic steps of math so that they know how to get the answer, and how to check and see if that answer is correct. Most marketers work with sales, which means one mistake can cause a major problem for not only them, but whatever company they’re working for. This means marketers must not only KNOW the math, they must be accurate with it as well. This means years of practice and mastering the types of math used in order to effectively use them in every day life.
Although many people don’t go into this much thought about how math really will connect to their future careers, there is always a connection as long as you look deep enough. Marketing can in your abilities. I wouldn’t recommend a career in marketing to a person who isn’t fond of math, or at least decent at it. Math is something that not everybody enjoys, but that everybody will need someday at one level or another. So next time a student asks a teacher when they will use math in their adult life, the teacher should assign a research paper on that topic!