3 Using formulas

3.1 Introduction

In the last section, we considered how a formula could be built up and then how it could be used. This section considers some more complicated formulas, which have already been developed and are used in a variety of different situations – cookery, healthcare, business and archaeology. We hope that these examples illustrate some of the very broad applications of maths and how mathematical relationships can be used in making decisions. As you work through these examples, you may like to consider where else maths might be used in each of these topics!

When you are trying to solve a real-life problem mathematically, you often use formulas that have already been developed, so it is important to have some ideas for how to apply these.

This section will help you to do that – you may like to make your own list of tips as you work through this section and compare it with the box at the end of this section.