Caroline Twitchell

Math 1010

Reflective Writing for Optimization Project

In this project we examined a company and their advertising options. They wanted to

know how to utilize a budget of $68,000 to reach the most people through TV and radio ads.

Knowing that the TV ads reached more people, they wanted to use at least three times more ads

on TV than radio.

To find out the most effective use of their money we made several linear equations and

inequalities:

We made an equation to describe the budget: 68,000> or = 400x + 1200 y. X being radio

ads, Y being TV ads, and the respective coefficients being the costs for each.

We created an equation to describe the number of ads total: 60< or = x + y

The last equation is the number of people they will reach: P= 1,900x + 14,500y. The

coefficients represent the respective number of people each kind of ad will reach.

This kind of analysis is useful and effective not only in advertising but many kinds of

planning. With a budget and objective (a limit and multiple variables) this is a great way to find

an optimal solution. A specific scenario would be paying for a taxi on a trip. You have a budget

limit of how much you will pay for travel in the trip and you have certain places you want to go.

Using this method, you could pick a travel agency and calculate how many places (or which

place) you could go within your budget.

 If I worked in an advertising agency, knowing and using this kind of math is crucial. As

found in this project, there were 3 potential outcomes of effective ways to reach many people. It

is important to explain why you chose the number of advertisements you did and be able to

prove that it would reach the most people compared to the other combinations.

If the information was changed, the results would drastically change. If there was a

bigger budget, we would be able to reach more people. If we learned more people would receive

the advertisement through the radio than the TV we would focus on putting more advertisements

over the air than on the screen. Since radio ads cost less we would be able to purchase more than

the ones on TV.

In the event that the number of ads is an integer, such as 15.2 radio ads and 46.8 TV ads,

I would round the values down and solve. There is no guarantee that rounding one number up

and the other down would remain within the budget, and since we cannot exceed the budget, but

don’t have to spend all of it exactly, we can be satisfied purchasing as many as we can and have a

little left over. If it were all 3 vertices that weren’t whole numbers, I would round them all down

and solve, choosing the option that reaches the most people.

This assignment gave me new insights to the usefulness of math. Knowing that there is a

logical and mathematical solution to just about any problem including many variables brings

peace of mind that there is a solution to anything.