G& T Math: Intro to Critical Thinking & Using Excel

What do these have in common? Businesses Card Games They use Numbers to make conclusions, and get ahead and win! Sports Sciences

Numbers are everywhere You need to look at them the right way to help you understand the big picture

For Example: What do you think this is? If you aren’t looking at it the right way, you’ll miss the big picture!

Let’s Do a Math Example: G&T Math’s Snack Stand For Sale: Hot Dogs Hamburgers Pretzels Soft Drinks Bottled Water Every student gets to share the profits for their own, personal money!

What is “Profit”? The amount earned in selling an item after you take into account how much you spent buying, operating, or producing that item Profit = Sales – Expenses For example: You sell a Soft Drink for $1.00 You had bought it for $0.30 Your profit is $0.70

G&T Math’s Snack Stand Goals Make as much profit as possible

Data you collect each month: How can you use this to help you reach your goal?

What are you trying to understand? “It just looks like a bunch of numbers, I don’t think it means anything, does it?” “There are so many ways I can analyze this …where do I even begin?” Don’t get stuck, ask yourself: What are you trying to understand? How can you better organize the numbers to see if they mean anything?

Step 1: What are you trying to understand? Goal: Make as much profit as possible Some Key Questions on Profit: What are total sales & profit? What product gives the most profit per unit? What product gives the most sales?

Step 2: How can you better organize the numbers to see if they mean anything? Let’s do a live pivot table demo in Excel to: Summarize this into a table Use the tables to answer the key questions When you have a lot of numbers….. Much faster than

What are the answers to these questions? Where are total sales & profit? $4,421 and $2,449!!! What product gives the most profit per unit? Hamburgers What product gives the most sales? Hamburgers

Let’s answer some more questions: How much more profit will we get if we sell 3x as many hamburgers as we do now? How much more profit will we get if we sell 3x as many soft drinks as we do now? Bonus question: How much more soft drinks would I need to sell to equal the same profit as selling 3x as many hamburgers? Let’s do a live demo of: A forecasting model How to summarize data into charts

Tricks to making a good forecast model: Find the right, common variables to help you answer your questions If you want to predict profit with changing sales units, what inputs do you need to know? Profit = Sales – Expenses Sales = Units Sold x Price Per Unit Expenses = Units Sold x Expense Per Unit

What are the answers? If you triple hamburger sales, we will have $3,673 in profit vs $2,449 If you triple soft drink sales, we will have $3,401 in profit vs $2,449

In Conclusion Numbers are everywhere You need the right perspective to help you You need strong critical thinking to know how to analyze and present numbers in the most meaningful way possible You can use technology like excel to help you organize numbers and calculate answers quickly and effectively