Business Maths Section 1

Basic maths
Seminar Activity 1
1.

You are tasked with organising a market hall for a conference, where sellers will be selling their products. The
sellers pitches are square and have an allocation of 3 metres x 3 metres. The hall that is being used is
rectangular, with dimensions of 24 metres x 18 metres. You will also need to keep space down one side for
refreshments and seating, which needs to be 3 metres x 9 metres.
a)

What is the maximum number of pitches you can fit in the space?

b)

As these conferences are rotated around the country in different venues, you have developed a formula
to gauge the pitch sizes dependent on demand and space available.
The formula is:

P = LW - 27
2

S
Where, P = Pitches; L = Length of hall, W = Width of hall, and S = Size of pitch
Calculate the size of pitches if P=25, L=22 and W=19
c)

The sales made at each conference increases as the footfall increases, and you use the following
formula to estimate total sales dependent on footfall.
Sales = 2P * 50 F
Where, P = Number of Pitches, and F = Footfall
If P= 36, what is the footfall if you were aiming for sales of 10,000?

2.

You have found that 3 years ago your company had invested a sum in a sinking fund, to cover non-routine
maintenance costs for their premises.
This fund gathers interest annually at a rate of 1.8%, and is now worth 30,252.13
a)

Using the formula below, calculate what the initial sum invested was, assuming there were no nonroutine maintenance costs over the period of 3 years.
V = S(1+i)

V is the current value

S is the sum invested
i is the rate of interest per year
n is the number of years invested.
b)

The reason you had discovered the fund, is that the roofing needed 6500 remedial work done on it.
This was paid for from the fund at the beginning of the year.
At the end of the year, what will the fund be worth?

3.

BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free) provides customers with 2 products for the price of one
One of the lines on the graph below represents this relationship as y = 2x.
NB This means that y is always double the value of x
a)

Which of the following lines represents this relationship?

B
C

5
4
3

2
1
0

4.

b)

Draw the graph that represents the bargain 3 for the price of 2

c)

Explain how the genuine value of these offers may not be as they seem at face value.

Working for an international building firm, you are looking to rent an apartment. One costs $800 a month

and has a $1000 deposit and the other costs $850 but has an $850 deposit.
a)

How long do you need to stay there before the first one is a better deal?

You were a bit concerned at the difficulty you had in working this out in your head, whilst travelling on the
subway, so have decided to brush up on solving simultaneous equations.
b)

What is the solution to these simultaneous equations?

5x + 3y = 13
3x y = 12

c)

What is the solution to these simultaneous equations?

6x + 6y = 27
4x + 5y = 22

5.

Your company has invested in manufacturing and selling a new bicycle to retail customers.
The company's weekly costs (C) were plotted against production level (L) for the last 50 weeks and a
regression line calculated to be C = 200 + 30L.
a)

Which statement about the breakdown of weekly costs is true?

A
B
C
D

b)

Fixed costs are 30. Variable costs per unit are 200.
Fixed costs are 200. Variable costs per unit are 30.
Fixed costs are 30. Variable costs per unit are 6.67.
Fixed costs are 200. Variable costs per unit are 6.67.
2

If cost = 3,800 24S and revenue = 410S 22S , where S = selling price per bicycle, how would you
express profit per bicycle (in terms of selling price)?
(NB Profit = Revenue cost)
2

434S 22S 3,800

434S 22S + 3,800

22S 434S + 3,800

386S 22S 3,800

c)

Your company is also selling bicycles direct to customers, and

Their own costs are 50,000 for manufacturing set-up costs, advertising, etc. and 110 to make each
bicycle. A batch of 7,000 bicycles have been made
Based on other products, you can expect sales to follow the rule:
Unit Sales = 7,000 20S
Where S is the selling price
Explain the rationale for this rule, and calculate the selling price that would mean no bicycles were
sold at all.

d)

According to this rule, how many bicycles would be sold at a selling price of 300?

e)

The profit for the sales can be calculated by the formula:

2

Profit = -20S + 9200S 820,000

Where S is the selling price
Calculate the profit if the price was set at (i) 300, and (ii) 200

Session1 Seminar Activity 2

1. The HR department have been recording absence data for different days of the week.
A
1
2

Days
absent

Percentage
of average

Absence rates

3
4

Day
Mon

451

5
6

Tue
Wed

247
298

7
8

Thu
Fri

249
303

9
10

Sat

282

17
18

Total

19

Average

1830
305

a) What formula would achieve the total in cell B17?

b) What is the formula in cell B19?
c) What is Mondays absence rate as a percentage of the average absence rate?
d) What formula would represent this in cell C4?

2. The list prices of the office furniture products, net of sales tax, have been obtained from a catalogue.
A
1

Product

B
List price
(net)

2
3

line

C
Sales
tax

D
Gross

4
5

Erik
Gallant

45.00
362.50

9.00
72.50

54.00
435.00

6
7

Dibble

88.20

17.64

105.84

a) What formula in cell C4 would calculate sales tax on the product Erik at 20%?
b) What is the formula in cell D5?

3. A company has recently launched a new product and has predicted that the sales revenue in m (y) depends
on the price in (x) in the following way:
2

y = -3x + 24x
Calculate the sales revenues for prices of 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 and produce a graph of your results using Excel.
What price optimises sales revenue?

4. The cost per item in (y) depends on the number of items produced per week (x) as follows:
2

y = x 36x + 1300
2
Produce a graph of this cost function using Excel and identify the number of items that should be produced
each week to minimise costs.