Money Matters

Abstract

Money and economics are among society’s earliest motivations for learning about and developing mathematics. If you think about it, the fact that we are able to facilitate intelligent business and exchange policies is not something we can take for granted. Isn’t it somewhat miraculous that one person can spend 40 hours a week designing computers with no awareness of where his food comes from, another can spend the same amount of time farming with no awareness of what goes on at the computer factory, and yet both end up with easy access to food, computers, and unrelated services like medical care? Somehow the glue of economics, aided by its mathematical foundations, enables this to smoothly happen in our modern society. In this chapter we highlight some fun historical anecdotes and some more modern thoughts on concepts related to money, economics, and business, intertwined with various aspects of mathematics.