Crystal Shanyse King Professor Starra Shermin: Algebra Course November 28th, 2014 M2 Linear Reflection & Report

When a person looks in the mirror, they see a reflection of themselves. Reflections in math often involve us flipping something over a line called the line of reflection. We can create mirror images of certain figures by reflecting them over a given line. It’s so amazing to use math in a reflection of our everyday lives. As a child, we think that math is pointless and why are we learning it? We think that we’ll never use it in life. But as i have grown older and have become an adult, i’ve used math almost everyday of my life from the smallest to the biggest things. It’s very important to be attentive in class, especially when your learning about algebra, because you never know when you’ll have to use it. In this week’s small group discussion, i learned so much from my classmates. Some of my peers did a linear equation reflection on they’re personal health, losing weight, making baby food, giving medicine to a baby, paycheck vs. expenses, a pool party, shopping, personal business, and budgeting. All examples of linear equations in real life. The example i was most impressed with was making baby food and giving medicine to a little child. I do not have any children, nor have i watched any long enough to give them medicine or baby food. But i learned that as a young parent it can be pretty scary. You are always concerned about what your putting into your child’s mouth. Whether it’s healthy or not. Also when you introduce a new type of food to a child, you have to feed the child one serving three times a day for four days. Another

example was when a child is sick, sometimes they have two types of medicines that have certain instructions on when to prescribe the medicine to the child. Like the one my classmate gave was, she was watching her little cousin who was home sick and she had to give him 2 types of medicines. One of them was to be given to the child every four hours and the other type was every two hours. So i thought that was interesting and since I’m not a parent, i certainly learned a lot…I definitely agree with my 2 classmates on the examples they provided because, it’s very fascinating how we can even use math for giving medicine to a child or making sure to give the child the right amount of servings of food. It’s very fascinating i think. They both gave very good examples of linear models. Your metabolism is basically the rate at which your body burns calories to create energy. So the faster your metabolism, the faster you burn calories and the easier it is to lose unwanted weight. To boost your metabolism naturally you just need to eat the right foods. You can sit down and literally eat a 1,000-calorie dinner and yet be absolutely starving just a few hours later and the reason is simple: Because your body didn’t get what it needed in those 1,000 calories so it sends signals to your brain telling you to ingest more calories and thus, the late-night cravings. That means that the surest way to end those late-night cravings and keep your weight loss goals on track is to eat a more balanced, nutritious diet that actually gives your body what it needs. Also a little bit of exercise works too with the eating right. My personal health and well being is very important to me. Im only 25 years old and i have had some serious health issues in the past year. From chest pains to tonsilitis, its been a nightmare for me. During this time, i gained weight and became very sick. I didn’t take proper care of myself until recently when i decide enough was enough. I said, I’m too young for all of this. So i choose to take action. I started eating right and exercising. Taking better care of myself. I wasn’t sure of how to lose the weight that i had gained, until i found a website called

myfitnesspal.com. It was really good. I inputted my weight, height, how active i will be every week, and how much i should lose. I chose 2lbs per week. So the website calculated how much time it will take me to lose (x) amount of weight in (y) amount of days or even a month. For me i need to lose about 30 pounds. So the website said, if i am very active everyday and cut 500 calories of what i eat and burn more than what i eat, i could lose 30 by March 15th, 2015. Thats about 15 weeks. I added a linear equation to find out how much weight i would lose at the end of 15 weeks and i came up with this. My current weight 188 pounds and the linear equation i would use for my goal would be, W=1882(n). W is my final weight and n is the number of weeks, it would take to reach my goal. So here we have W=188-2(15), W=188-30, & W=158 pounds. By following this equation, it states that by losing 2 pounds per weeks in 15 weeks, i would have weighed 158 pounds. This is a linear equation because, this plan has many variables that requires accuracy and it shows the relationship. If i wanted to put this on a graph, the y intercept would equal 188 and the slope would equal -2. I believe after each week, the weight would definitely decrease by 2 pounds, so the linear equation should show a decreasing slope over time in representation of my weight loss.

References: MyFitnessPal, LLC. MyFitnessPal, 2011. Retrieved from www.myfitnesspal.com