Annette Thomas

November 10, 2014

Math 1010

E-PORTFOLIO: REFLECTIVE PAPER

OPTIMIZING AN ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN________________________________________
In this project, we looked into a problem about a local business advertising their new product by
the use of radio and TV ads. They had a total of 70 ads, where they had as many TV ads as radio ads.
Radio ads cost $25 dollars each and TV ads cost $100 dollars each and an advertising budget is $5500
with an estimation that there will be 1800 listeners for radio and 2000 people will watch the TV ad.
This project is to help understand how certain forms of math can be applied to real life situations. In this
case, linear programming is a technique used in an advertising campaign to know the maximum number
of people who would be exposed to TV ads and Radio ads, and how many of each are purchased to be
exposed to said people, but in this project we used linear inequalities to reach the goal of said answers.
An example of some optimization problems would be:
1.) In the first example of an optimization problem according to Kiryl Tsishchanka. A farmer owns 2400
feet of land and wanted to create a fence off the rectangular field next to a river with the exception
of putting no fence between the border of the land and the river. The goal is to find the dimensions
of the three fencing choices that are displayed in the problem. (Tsishchanka, cims.nyu.edu, 2010)
2.) (Made up question.) A concert is being held in the Maverick Center this week. The stadium is 17000
square feet and the human capacity to fit in the arena is about 12,600 people. There are three
sections to the arena: The general admissions area which is about 5,600 square feet. This section
has a border between the audience and the stage. Next, is the main seating area, and then lastly is
the nosebleed area. How many people can fit inside the standing area?
The goal to this question is to figure out how large the general admissions area is compared to
the arena in total which is about 17000 square feet.
3.) A last example of an optimization program is another problem according to Kiryl Tsishchankas
example is that there are workers creating a fence that go alongside the border of a building. They
have up to 500ft worth of fencing materials and the only side that doesnt need fencing is the
border side where the building is. What needs to be found from this problem is the dimensions of
the field that covers the largest area of where the fence is being created. (Tsishchanka,
cims.nyu.edu, 2010)
Throughout this project, Ive learned how math has really put an impact on real life situations and it
has really effected my views as to how math is really all around us in situations that we may have never
thought math would be involved. Most students have always considered math as something that was
irrelevant and that would not be coming back for them later on in life, but Ive certainly been proved
wrong by the last two projects presented to me throughout this semester.

Works Cited
Tsishchanka, K. (2010). cims.nyu.edu.
Retrieved from https://cims.nyu.edu/: https://cims.nyu.edu/~kiryl/Calculus/Section_4.5-Optimization%20Problems/Optimization_Problems.pdf