Math exploration for IB topic?

Hey I'm in Math Sl for IB and I was just given the introduction to my math IA so I'm trying to find an area of interest. I'm interested in finance, economics, and business, so I know there are many mathematical applications in those fields, especially finance. However I am worried about the maths being too difficult or not covered in the IB syllabus. So should I do my math exploration in a subject like finance, economics etc. and if yes any particular branch I should focus on?

Thanks

Reply 1

sunnydespair

You could do something that's statistical ? That would probably be the easiest. You can then use Excel to do all your analysis. I assume it would mainly be a descriptive analysis of a data-set. Discuss with your tutor?

Reply 2

Hasufel

you might be interested (don`t know your difficulty level, though) in what`s called - for Economics - "cobweb theory"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobweb_model

is one example

But, what i find more interesting is an area related to cobweb theory - non-linear dynamics and chaos thery -

Sounds WAY more complicated than it actually is! it`s about how basic functions behave when you alter their parameters

e.g. the recurrence function

z=z^{2}+c

alters drastically depending on what c is. (Google "julia Sets")

Reply 3

BruhIB

Thanks both of you, but non linear dynamics and choas theory is more related to physics which I don't take, and its a little difficult for me.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 4

rayquaza17

Original post by BruhIB

Thanks both of you, but non linear dynamics and choas theory is more related to physics which I don't take, and its a little difficult for me.

Chaos theory is actually maths! I did a module on chaos theory last semester and it was really interesting (and there were lots of pretty pictures involved!)

Like Hasufel says, it's just changing constants in equations and seeing what you get. However I think a project on chaos theory would involve you being able to use something like Matlab so you can produce the pictures.

I think doing the project on statistics would be your best bet though tbh.