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Financial Algebra: Advanced Algebra

with Financial Applications 2nd Edition,


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Second Edition

Financial Algebra
Advanced Algebra with Financial Applications

Robert Gerver | Richard Sgroi

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Chapter 4 Automobile Ownership 208
4-1 Automobile Ads 210 MATH TOPICS
Chord Metric System
4-2 Automobile Transactions 216
Circle Middle ordinate
4-3 Automobile Insurance 224 Circumference Projectile motion
Common ratio Proportions
4-4 Probability: The Basis of Insurance 232 Conditional probability formula Quadratic equation
4-5 Linear Automobile Depreciation 241 Diameter Radius
Domain Ratios
4-6 Historical and Exponential English Standard System Slope
Depreciation 249 Exponential decay Slope intercept form of a linear equation
Exponential depreciation Spreadsheets and formulas
4-7 Driving Data 258
Exponential function Square root function
4-8 Driving Safety Data 268 Exponential regression System of linear equations
Geometric progression System of linear, exponential equations
4-9 Accident Investigation Data 274 Geometric sequences Two-way tables
Independent events Venn diagrams
Intersection point x-intercept, y-intercept
Linear equations

Chapter 5 Employment Basics 290


5-1 Looking for Employment 292 MATH TOPICS
Arithmetic sequence Literal equations
5-2 Pay Periods and Hourly Rates 298
Cusps Literal expressions
5-3 Commissions, Royalties, Domain Piecewise functions
and Piecework Pay 306 Exponential functions Percent
Geometric sequence Spreadsheets and formulas
5-4 Employee Benefits 314 Graphs of functions
5-5 Social Security and Medicare 320

Chapter 6 Income Taxes 330


6-1 Tax Tables, Worksheets, MATH TOPICS
and Schedules 332 Compound inequality Literal expressions
Compound inequality notation Percent
6-2 Modeling Tax Schedules 340
Domain Piecewise function
6-3 Income Statements 349 Inequalities Slope, intercept form of a linear equation
Interval notation Spreadsheets and formulas
6-4 Forms 1040EZ and 1040A 357 Linear equation
6-5 Form 1040 and Schedules A and B 370

Chapter 7 Independent Living 390


7-1 Finding a Place to Live 392 MATH TOPICS
7-2 Reading a Floor Plan 401 Apothem Proportion
Area Pythagorean theorem and its converse
7-3 Mortgage Application Process 409 Circumference Regular polygons
Cosine ratio Similar triangles
7-4 Purchasing a Home 419
Exponential equation Sine ratio
7-5 Mortgage Points 430 Exponential regression equation Spreadsheets
Linear regression equation Spreadsheets and formulas
7-6 Rentals, Condominiums, Literal equation System of linear equations
and Cooperatives 437 Percent Tangent ratio
7-7 Home Maintenance Percents Volume
and Improvement 445 Perimeter

vi

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Chapter 8 The Stock Market 462
8-1 Business Organization 464 MATH TOPICS
8-2 Stock Market Data 469 Average Linear regression equation
Bar chart Moving average
8-3 Stock Market Data Charts 477 Candlestick chart Percent decrease
Converting fractions to percents Percent increase
8-4 Trends in Stock Closing Prices 483
Cubic regression equation Proportion
8-5 Stock Market Ticker 494 Line graph Quadratic regression equation
Linear equations Spreadsheets and formulas
8-6 Stock Transactions 500
8-7 Stock Transaction Fees 505
8-8 Stock Splits 511
8-9 Dividend Income 517

Chapter 9 Modeling a Business 530


9-1 Inventions 532 MATH TOPICS
9-2 Market Research 543 Axis of symmetry Objective function
Bias Parabola
9-3 Supply and Demand 551 Completing the square method Quadratic equation
Complex number Quadratic formula
9-4 Fixed and Variable Expenses 557
Complex roots Random number tables
9-5 Graphs of Expense and Revenue Experimental design Roots of a quadratic equation
Functions 564 Hypothesis testing Roots, zeros of a quadratic equation
Imaginary unit Sampling
9-6 Breakeven Analysis 572 Inequality constraints Surveying
9-7 The Profit Equation 578 Leading coefficient System of linear equations
Linear equation System of linear, quadratic equations
9-8 Mathematically Modeling a Business 585 Linear programming Unbiased estimators
Literal quadratic equation
9-9 Optimal Outcomes 590
Minimum, maximum

Chapter 10 Planning for Retirement 606


10-1 Retirement Income From Savings 608 MATH TOPICS
Expected value Percent increase
10-2 Social Security Benefits 617
Exponential equation Percents
10-3 Pensions 626 Histogram Pie charts
Literal equations Probability
10-4 Life Insurance 634 Mean Rational equations
10-5 Investments Diversification 642 Measures of central tendency Spreadsheets

Chapter 11 Prepare a Budget 658


11-1 Utility Expenses 660 MATH TOPICS
Addition, subtraction of matrices Matrix
11-2 Electronic Utilities 668
Array Matrix multiplication
11-3 Charting A Budget 677 Bar graph Piecewise functions
Central angle Ratio
11-4 Cash Flow and Budgeting 689 Circle graph Scalar
11-5 Budget Matrices 700 Dimensions of a matrix Scalar multiplication
Element of a matrix Sector
Appendix A 718 Greatest integer function Spreadsheets and formulas
Appendix B: Sample Tax Table 720 Inequalities Zero matrix
Line graph
Glossary 734

Index 746
vii

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
New to this Edition
Note: The code “FA1E” refers to the first edition of Financial Algebra and the section number from
the first edition follows.

Chapter 1 Discretionary 3-5 Credit Cards FA1E 4-4


Expenses 3-6 Credit Card Statement FA1E 4-5
3-7 Average Daily Balance FA1E 4-6
1-3 Categorizing Expenses—Discretionary
vs. essential expenses - measures of central
tendency and frequency distributions Chapter 4 Automobile
1-4 Vacation Travel Expenses—cumulative and
relative frequency, percentiles
Ownership
1-3 Entertainment Expenses—plays, movies, 4-1 Classified Ads FA1E 5-1
concerts, out to eat, video games, music 4-2 Automobile Transactions FA1E 5-2
downloads, sports events, amusement parks
measures of spread 4-3 Automobile Insurance FA1E 5-4
1-4 Vacation Destination Expenses—normal 4-4 Probability: The Basis of Insurance—
curve and z-scores conditional probability, independent events,
Venn diagrams –NEW SECTION
1-5 Personal Expenses—linear regression and
scatterplots 4-5 Linear Automobile Depreciation FA1E 5-5
4-6 Historical and Exponential Depreciation—
geometric sequences plus FA1E 5-6
Chapter 2 Banking Services
4-7 Driving Data FA1E 5-7
2-1 Checking Accounts FA1E 3-1
4-8 Driving Safety Data – projectile motion qua-
2-2 Reconcile a Bank Statement FA1E 3-2 dratics plus FA1E 5-8
2-3 Savings Accounts—intro arithmetic 4-9 Accident Investigation Data FA1E 5-9
sequences with constant addition plus
FA1E 3-3
2-4 Explore Compound Interest FA1E 3-4
Chapter 5 Employment Basics
2-5 Compound Interest Formula FA1E 3-5 5-1 Look for Employment FA1E 6-1
2-6 Continuous Compounding limits of rational 5-2 Pay Periods and Hourly Rates—geometric
functions, plus FA1E 3-6 sequence-penny doubled every day plus
FA1E 6-2
2-7 Future Value of Investments FA1E 3-7
5-3 Commissions, Royalties, and Piecework Pay
2-8 Present Value of Investments FA1E 3-8 FA1E 6-3
2-9 The Term of a Single Deposit Account—new 5-4 Employee Benefits FA1E 6-4
section—logarithms plus
5-5 Social Security and Medicare FA1E 6-5
2-10 The Terms of a Systematic Savings Account—
new section—properties of logs
Chapter 6 Income Taxes
Chapter 3 Consumer Credit 6-1 Tax Tables, Worksheets, and Schedules
FA1E 7-1
3-1 Introduction to Consumer Credit FA1E 4-1
6-2 Modeling Tax Schedules FA1E 7-2
3-2 Loans FA1E 4-2
6-3 Income Statements FA1E 7-3
3-3 Student Loans—new section
6-4 Forms 1040EZ and 1040A FA1E 7-4
3-4 Loan Calculations and Regression FA1E 4-3
6-5 Form 1040 and Schedules A and B FA1E 7-5

viii

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Chapter 7 Independent Living 9-3 Supply and Demand FA1E 2-3
9-4 Fixed and Variable Expenses FA1E 2-4
7-1 Finding a Place to Live FA1E 8-1
9-5 Graphs of Expense and Revenue Functions –
7-2 Reading a Floor Plan FA1E 8-2 completing the square plus FA1E 2-5
7-3 Mortgage Application Process FA1E 8-3 9-6 Breakeven Analysis FA1E 2-6
7-4 Purchasing a Home FA1E 8-4 9-7 The Profit Equation –add complex roots plus
7-5 Mortgage Points –new section FA1E 2-7
7-6 Rentals, Condominiums, and Cooperatives 9-8 Mathematically Modeling a Business FA1E 2-8
FA1E 8-5 9-9 Optimal Outcomes— new section on linear
7-7 Home Maintenance and Improvement—new programming
section: trig and pythag, similar triangles

Chapter 10 Planning for


Chapter 8 The Stock Market Retirement
8-1 Business Organization FA1E 1-1 10-1 Retirement Income from Savings FA1E 9-1
8-2 Stock Market Data FA1E 1-2 10-2 Social Security Benefits FA1E 9-2
8-3 Stock Market Data Charts FA1E 1-3 10-3 Pensions FA1E 9-3
8-4 Simple Moving Averages FA1E 1-4 10-4 Life Insurance FA1E 9-4
8-5 Stock Market Ticker FA1E 1-5 10-5 Diversification Of Investments—new section
8-6 Stock Transactions FA1E 1-6
8-7 Stock Transaction Fees FA1E 1-7 Chapter 11 Prepare a Budget
8-8 Stock Splits FA1E 1-8
11-1 Utility Expenses FA1E 10-1
8-9 Dividend Income FA1E 1-9
11-2 Electronic Utilities FA1E 10-2
11-3 Deferred Payments —new section
Chapter 9 Modeling a Business
11-4 Charting a Budget FA1E 10-3
9-1 Inventions—surveying, critiquing experimen- 11-5 Cash Flow and Budgeting—introduction to
tal designs, bias new section matrices plus FA1E 10-4
9-2 Market Research—unbiased estimators, sam- 11-6 Budget Matrices—new section—operations
pling, types of samples, critiquing experimen- with matrices
tal design methods new section

ix

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Inside the Student Edition

Chapter 8

The Stock Market


8-1 Business Organization
8-2 Stock Market Data
8-3 Stock Market Data Charts
8-4 Trends in Stock Closing Prices
8-5 Stock Market Ticker
8-6 Stock Transactions
A relevant quote and chapter
8-7 Stock Transaction Fees introduction set the stage for the
8-8 Stock Splits topics covered in the chapter.
8-9 Dividend Income

What do you think Frank Hubbard meant in this quote?


In the future, you will incur many expenses, such as a home,
The safe way to automobile, insurance, food, clothing, and health care. Some are
double your money major expenses and some are minor, but each costs money. To
is to fold it over once have money for major expenses, it helps to have your savings grow
and put it in your in value. You have already learned how bank interest can help your
pocket. money grow. However, the prevailing bank interest rates limit the
—Frank Hubbard, journalist degree to which your money can grow. Investing can help money
grow in value, and there is no limit to the amount of growth, but you
can also lose all of your investment.
You need to find a personal balance between risk and reward
Really?
when you make choices about investments. Investments are never
without questions. Did you miss the chance to make more money
because you were being overly cautious? Was the investment too
C orporations sometimes choose names
that are personal, humorous, historical,
the “K” in kola to a “C” for appearance
purposes.
risky? Did you risk losing principal by investing in something that may or psychological. Many are acronyms, Adidas is taken from the name of the
where a new word is created by the first company’s founder, Adolph (Adi) Dassler.
not have had a sound foundation? letters of several words. Below are some eBay was created by Pierre Omidyar,
Investors struggle with these questions every day. The stock market well-known corporations and how their who originally wanted to use the name
names were established. Echo Bay. The name was already taken by
is a forum in which the investment risk/reward balance is put to the Amazon.com was originally known a gold mining company, so he shortened
test. Will the market advance? Will the market decline? No one can be as Cadabra.com. Its founder selected it to eBay.
certain. Will the corporations you choose flourish, grow, and succeed, Amazon as a corporate name because the LoJack is a corporation that makes
Amazon River has the largest volume of automobile antitheft devices. The name
or falter? With a strong knowledge of the stock market, corporations, any river in the world. He also wanted is a humorous adaptation of the word
and investment strategies, you as an investor can make decisions that a name that began with “A” so that “hijack.”
are based on experience, data, trends, and mathematics. alphabetically, it would appear at the top Aflac is an acronym for the American
of a list. Family Life Assurance Company.
Coca-Cola is a name that has Xerox comes from a Greek
462
its origins in the ingredients of the expression for “dry writing.” The Xerox
product—coca leaves and kola nuts. process was invented in 1937 by law
The founder, John Pemberton, changed student Chester Carlson.

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{
“This information is interesting
and relevant!
© Alewtincka/Shutterstock.com

Showing real-world relevance


Really!
is always a good lead into the
section.”
463

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Really? Really! captures students’


attention by discussing a fascinating
real-life topic that relates to the
chapter’s content.

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Structure Puts Math into Context

8-1 Business Organization


Warm-Up provides a refresher for
Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
Accordingly, a genius is often merely a talented person
basic concepts.
who has done all of his or her homework.
—Thomas Edison, inventor

Objectives profit
personally liable Warm-Up
• State the basic vocabulary of
business organizations.
partnership
corporation
Create and solve an equation that A list of objectives provides the
main learning outcomes for the
models the following relationship in
• Compute financial responsibility of shares of stock terms of x.
business ownership based on ratios shareholders Find two consecutive integers such that
and percentages. limited liability
private corporation
the sum of three times the first and twice
the second is 27.
chapter.
public corporation
Key Terms
capital
sole proprietorship

{
How Do Businesses Start?
Think of everything you use on a daily basis, from complex electronic devices to
simple items like straws, paper clips, and toothbrushes. Have you ever wondered
who invented them, or how each has been improved upon? Some inventions
provide an opportunity to build a business, but not all. It takes imagination,
money, and effort to create a successful business. The money used to start or
expand a business is called capital.
A business owned by one person is a sole proprietorship. The owner, or
proprietor, can hire people to help run the business, but these employees are
“An intriguing
quote at the beginning of
not owners. The owner is responsible for all expenses, including labor and raw
materials used in manufacturing a product or providing a service. The money left
after all expenses are paid is profit. The owner of a sole proprietorship is entitled
to all of the profits. However, the owner is responsible, or personally liable, for
any losses. Even if the business does not make a profit, the owner must still pay all
of the bills of the business. each section motivates
A business that is owned by a group of people, called partners, is a
partnership. Partners share the profits and the responsibility for any losses. The
partners are personally liable for any losses. Personal liability may require risking
personal property. Sole proprietors and partners must consider this possibility
learning!”
when creating a business.
A corporation is a business organization that can be owned by one person
or a group of people. Each owner who invests money in the corporation receives
shares of stock in the corporation. The owners are called shareholders. Stock
certificates are used as proof of ownership. Unlike sole proprietorships and
partnerships, the shareholders in a corporation have limited liability—each

464 Chapter 8 The Stock Market

71790_ch08_hr_462-529.indd 464
The best way to deal with credit card debt is to educate
12/26/16 1:40 PM

yourself.
Mark Rosen, Author

“An interesting introduction and a


great metaphor for the section!” Although it’s easy to forget sometimes, a share is not a
lottery ticket . . . it’s part-ownership of a business.
Peter Lynch, American businessman, Investment strategist,
and Philanthropist

Nobody ever lost money taking a profit.


Bernard Baruch, Businessman

xi

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The Essential Question helps focus
attention on the big idea
What are social security and medicare?

How do people gain access to The Essential Question helps focus


money they keep in the bank? attention on the big idea of each section. You
What is compound interest? will be able to answer the question by the end
of the section.
What information do you need to
know before taking out a loan?

What information does a credit card


statement give you?

How do revenue and expenses


contribute to profit calculation?

8-3 Stock Market Data Charts


Although it’s easy to forget sometimes, a share is not
a lottery ticket . . . it’s part-ownership of a business.
—Peter Lynch, American businessman, investment strategist, and
philanthropist
Each section begins with a
discussion of terms and
Objectives
• Interpret a stock bar chart.
Key Terms
stock chart
Warm-Up
An item usually sells for X dollars. It
concepts related to the


Create a stock bar chart.
Interpret a stock candlestick chart.
stock bar chart
candlestick chart
is marked down to Y dollars. Interpret
each of the following algebraic section topic.
expressions in this context.
• Create a stock candlestick chart.
a. |Y 2 X|
b. |Y 2 X|/X
c. 100|Y 2 X|/X

{
How Can Stock Data Be Displayed?
Stock data can be presented in list form or in graphical form. The graphical form
“This book contains relevant and
is known as a stock chart. These charts offer pictorial information on anything
from a day’s worth of data to multiyear data trends. Most stock charts present
historical information about the trading prices and volumes of a particular stock.
current information high school
students need. The educational
A common stock chart format is the stock bar chart. The chart below shows
price and volume information for Johnston Electric on April 30.
Notice the chart consists of two
bar graphs. The top graph shows daily
information about the day’s high, low,
open, and close prices. The bottom graph focus of today is on standards.
shows the daily volume for that stock.
The top shaded bar is a rectangle
formed by the day’s low and high. The line
segment on the left side of the rectangle
High
33.5
33.4
33.3
33.2
33.1
This book allows both to be
addressed.”
is positioned at the day’s opening price Open 33.0
32.9
and the line segment on the right side is Close 32.8
32.7
positioned at the day’s closing price. 32.6
The bottom shaded bar starts at 0 Low
and rises to the approximate number of Volume
shares traded on that date. Notice that 40
the scale for this particular portion of the 30
Millions

chart is in millions, although it could be in 20


hundreds or thousands depending on the Number of
Shares 10
range in the volume. Stock bar charts can Traded 0
also be used to show the market action on April 30
multiple days.
8-3 Stock Market Data Charts 477

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xii

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When am I ever going to use
this in real life?

owner cannot lose more than the value of his or her share of the business.
The number of shareholders in a corporation depends on the structure of the
business. When all of the shares are owned solely by a few individuals, and are
not available for sale to the public, the corporation is a private corporation, also In Skills and Strategies, the heart of the
known as a privately held corporation. The New York Yankees are an example of
a private corporation. So is Lego. Your local car dealership is most likely a private
corporation. When anyone can purchase stock in a corporation, the corporation
section, math concepts are taught through
is a public corporation. You might already be familiar with public corporations,
such as Nike, McDonald’s, Xerox, and Apple. These corporations are owned by
worked-out examples. Examples present
housewives, doctors, plumbers, teachers, students, senior citizens—anyone who
buys a share in the corporation. If a shareholder owns more than 50% of the each math concept step-by-step.
shares, that shareholder owns a majority of the shares. The prices of shares of
stock in public corporations can be found in newspapers, on television business
channels, and on the Internet.

{
Skills and Strategies
When a business is owned by more than one person, the owners do not
necessarily own equivalent portions of the business. Ratios and percentages can
be used to represent the financial responsibility of owners and partners. Recall the
relationship between decimals and percentages. “I love the emphasis
To convert a decimal to a percentage, multiply the decimal by 100 and annex a
percent sign.
To convert a percentage to a decimal, divide the percent by 100 and drop the on applications with
percent sign.

EXAMPLE 1
relevance to the world we
Michelle invests $15,000 in a partnership that has four other partners. The
total investment of all partners is $240,000. What percent of the business does
Michelle own?
live in, not on symbolic
SOLUTION Represent Michelle’s investment as a fraction of the total investment.
Convert the fraction to a decimal and write as a percent. manipulation.”
Michelle’s investment 15,000
Write as a fraction. 5
Total investment 240,000
Divide. 15,000 4 240,000 5 0.0625
Multiply by 100. Write a percent sign. 0.0625 3 100 5 6.25%
Michelle owns 6.25% of the partnership.

Kyle invests $20,000 in a partnership that has five other partners. The total Check Your
investment of the partners is $160,000. What percent of the business is owned by Understanding
the five other partners?

EXAMPLE 2
The total number of shares of stock in Bulls Corp is 650,000. Mike owns 12% of
the shares. How many shares of Bulls Corp stock does he own?
SOLUTION Let x represent the number of shares Mike owns.
12
8-1 5Business Organization 465
Express 12% as a fraction. 12%
100
12 x
Write a proportion. 5
100 650,000
Cross multiply. 100 x 5 (12)(650,000)
Find the product. 100 x 5 7,800,000

All math concepts are taught


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100 x 7,800,000
Divide both sides by 100. 5
100 100

within real-life context.


x 5 78,000
Mike owns 78,000 shares of the Bulls Corp.

Check Your Jillian owns 60% of the stock in a private catering corporation. There are 1,200 When am I ever going to use
shares in the entire corporation. How many shares does Jillian own?
this in real life? is answered
Understanding

EXAMPLE 3
Three partners are investing a total of $900,000 to open a garden and
landscaping store. Their investments are in the ratio 2:3:5. How much does the
here!
partner that invested the least contribute?
SOLUTION Use the ratio 2:3:5 to write an expression for the amount each partner
invested.
Let 2x represent the amount invested by the first partner.
Let 3x represent the amount invested by the second partner.
Let 5x represent the amount invested by the third partner.
Write an equation showing the three investments total $900,000.
2 x 1 3x 1 5 x 5 900,000
Combine like terms. 10 x 5 900,000
Divide each side of the equation by 10. x 5 90,000
The partner that invested the least is represented by the expression 2x.
Substitute $90,000 into the expression. 2(90,000) 5 180,000
The partner who invested the least amount contributed $180,000.

Check Your Two partners are starting a wedding planning business. The total investment is
Understanding $45,000. Their investments are in the ratio 4:5. How much does each investor
contribute?

Extend Your Two partners each invest 35% in a startup business. They need to find another

Understanding investor for the rest of the money. What percent of the business will that person
own? Write a ratio to represent the investments in the business.

466 Chapter 8 The Stock Market

xiii

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Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Ongoing Assessment and Review
Simple Moving Averages Using the Subtraction and
Addition Method
The calculation of a simple moving average can be tedious because you have to
find the average for each time interval. There is an alternate way to compute the
moving average that is simpler.
Suppose you want to determine a 3-day simple moving average for six trading
days. Let the trading prices for the days be represented by A, B, C, D, E, and F.
The trading prices for the first three days are A, B, and C. The average of those
prices is

{
A 1B 1C A B C
5 1 1
3 3 3 3
Using the method in Example 1, find the average of days 2–4 using B, C, and
D. This is the same as subtracting price A and adding price D, or
A B C A D
“I like the
1 1 2 1
3 3 3 3 3
Rearranging the terms and simplifying, this process is the same as finding the immediate check
average for days 2–4.
A
3
A B
2 1 1 1 5 1 1 5
3 3
C
3
D
3
B
3
C
3
D
3
B 1C 1D
3
of understanding
instead of waiting
until the end of the
EXAMPLE 2
Use the subtraction and addition method to determine the 4-day SMA for the
following closing prices.
$121, $122, $120, $119, $124, $128, $126
SOLUTION Calculate the average closing prices of days 1–4.
chapter.”
121 1 122 1 120 1 119
Add the first four prices. Divide by 4. 5 120.50.
4
Use subtraction and addition to determine the averages for days 2–5.

121 124 121 124


Use previous average, , and 120.50 2 1 5 121.25
4 4 4 4
Find the averages for days 3–6 and days 4–7.
122 128 122 128
Use previous average, , and 121.25 2 1 5 122.75
4 4 4 4

Use previous average,


120
, and
126
122.75 2
120 126
1 5 124.25
Check Your Understanding
4 4 4 4
The simple moving averages are $120.50, $121.25, $122.75, and $124.25.
allows you to immediately prac-
tice the concept on your own.
Use the subtraction and addition method to determine the 3-day SMA for the
closing prices $28, $31, $37, $38, and $35.
Check Your The questions are similar to the
Understanding
example and help you gauge
your understanding of the skills
Extend Your
being taught.
In Example 2, what would the eighth trading day’s closing price have to be so that
the next moving average remains the same at $124.25? Understanding

8-4 Trends in Stock Closing Prices 485

Applications

Never try to walk across a river just because it has an


71790_ch08_hr_462-529.indd average
485 depth of four feet. 12/30/16 10:39 AM

—Milton Friedman, American economist

1. Why might the author be warning readers to be cautious of averages? How


Extend Your Understanding
might these words apply to what you have learned?
In Exercises 2–5, use the method illustrated in Example 1 to determine the
provides an opportunity to solve a
more challenging problem.
simple moving averages by repeatedly finding sums.
2. Determine the 3-day SMA for the 10-consecutive-day closing prices of
Angie’s List Inc. listed below.
$7.78 $8.08 $7.99 $8.02 $7.89 $8.72 $9.19 $9.16
3. Determine the 5-day SMA for the 10-consecutive-day closing prices for
$8.98 $9.38
Carefully
Sherwin-Williams Co listed below.
$242.50 $273.98 $278.16 $293.94 $285.04 developed,
proven
$290.80 $296.02 $291.01 $293.41 $286.85
4. Determine the 4-day SMA for the 10-consecutive-day closing prices for
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. listed below.
$57.35
$56.97
$58.61
$56.35
$57.98
$56.83
$58.07
$57.16
$57.50
$57.18
applications
5. Determine the 6-day SMA for the 12-consecutive-day closing prices for
Exxon Mobil Corp listed below. at the end of
$92.60
$89.61
$92.46
$89.51
$92.45
$90.07
$91.79
$88.82
$93.07
$89.93
$89.70
$88.82 each section
require you to
In Exercises 6–9, use the method illustrated in Example 2 to determine moving
averages by subtraction and addition.
6. Determine the 2-day SMA for the 10-consecutive-day closing prices for
Western Digital Corp listed below.
$101.96 $101.80 $101.50 $103.07 $104.94
apply the
$105.12 $105.66 $104.76 $100.56 $101.31
7. Determine the 3-day SMA for the 10-consecutive-day closing prices for concepts to a
Procter & Gamble Co listed below.
$66.21
$66.65
$65.90
$66.65
$67.05
$65.80
$67.03
$65.92
$66.80
$65.21
specific question
8. Determine the 4-day SMA for the 10-consecutive-trading-day closing prices
for Toyota Motor Corp listed below.
or scenario.
$121.69 $122.85 $120.70 $123.61 $123.18
$122.03 $122.82 $124.14 $124.92 $124.06
9. Determine the 6-day SMA for the 10-consecutive-trading-day closing prices
for SunEdison Inc. listed below.
$2.65 $2.63 $2.70 $2.63 $2.50 $2.65 $2.66 $2.56 $2.52 $2.37

8-4 Trends in Stock Closing Prices 491

71790_ch08_hr_462-529.indd 491 12/26/16 1:41 PM

xiv

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Chapter Assessment provides Real Numbers: You Write the Story!
an opportunity to check your knowl- asks you to examine a graph and write a
edge of the chapter content. story focused around the graph’s information,
giving you an opportunity to be creative while
at the same time sharpening your graph
interpretation skills.
Chapter 8 Assessment
Real You Write the Story!!
Numbers Examine the graph below. Write a short news-type article, using facts obtained
online or at the library, centered around this graph. You can find an electronic
copy of the graph at www.cengage.com/financial_alg2e. Copy and paste it into
your article. Chapter 8 Assessment
14.5

14
Real You Write the Story!!
13.5 Numbers Examine the graph below. Write a short news-type article, using facts obtained
online or at the library, centered around this graph. You can find an electronic
13 copy of the graph at www.cengage.com/financial_alg2e. Copy and paste it into
your article.
12.5

14.5
12

14
11.5

13.5
11
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
13

What’s 1. Examine the equation below used for determining the capital gain made on a
stock. Look through this chapter and your notes to help you write a problem
12.5

the Problem? that could be modeled by this equation. 12

((900)(12.55) 2 (900)(12.55)(.01)) 2 ((900)(8.14) 1 25) 5 3,831.05


11.5

11
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Reality 1. Choose a corporation that you are interested in following. Use the newspaper
or Internet to find the daily low, high, close, and volume of your stock for the
Check next 3 weeks. Set up a graph to record these prices and the volume. Discuss
the trends for the 3-week period. Check the corporation’s website for major What’s 1. Examine the equation below used for determining the capital gain made on a
stock. Look through this chapter and your notes to help you write a problem
news about the corporation. Do a regression analysis for the last 15 trading
days of this stock. Discuss the trend over the 3 weeks and include any major the Problem? that could be modeled by this equation.
corporate news that might have affected the trend.
((900)(12.55) 2 (900)(12.55)(.01)) 2 ((900)(8.14) 1 25) 5 3,831.05
2. Discuss stocks with your parents or guardians. Find out if they own any stocks
now, or ever did. If you earn money, discuss with them the possibility of
purchasing shares of stock for a corporation you are interested in following.
Reality 1. Choose a corporation that you are interested in following. Use the newspaper
or Internet to find the daily low, high, close, and volume of your stock for the
Check next 3 weeks. Set up a graph to record these prices and the volume. Discuss
524 Chapter 8 The Stock Market the trends for the 3-week period. Check the corporation’s website for major
news about the corporation. Do a regression analysis for the last 15 trading
days of this stock. Discuss the trend over the 3 weeks and include any major
corporate news that might have affected the trend.
2. Discuss stocks with your parents or guardians. Find out if they own any stocks
now, or ever did. If you earn money, discuss with them the possibility of
71790_ch08_hr_462-529.indd 524 12/26/16 1:41 PM
purchasing shares of stock for a corporation you are interested in following.

524 Chapter 8 The Stock Market

Reality Check provides spe-


cific suggestions for research 71790_ch08_hr_462-529.indd 524 12/26/16 1:41 PM

opportunities, projects, and guest


speakers to extend your learning What’s The Problem? provides you
experience. with a problem posing activity related to a
­chapter problem. You are given an equa-
tion or formula featured in the chapter, with
numerical substitutions for each variable.
You then have to think backwards and
create the problem, using the numbers,
that have a solution modeled by the given
equation.

{
“Excellent
activities that
help connect
math to the
real world.”

xv

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Really? Really! Revisited continues the
theme of the Really? Really! feature at the
beginning of each chapter. In Really? Really!
Revisited, you use mathematics to solve a
problem or extension related to the Really?
Really! theme.

{
Google is derived from the number googol, which is a 1 with 100 zeros following
Really? it. This is equivalent to 10100 . Despite the original accidental change in spelling

“I love how it
(but not pronunciation), the name still elicits the idea of something very large.
Really! How large is 10100 ? There isn’t a googol of anything on the planet! Let’s take a look
at some surprisingly large and surprisingly small numbers.
Revisited Given that 1,000,000 pennies stacked one on top of another reaches about

is tied to what
1 mile high, how high would 1 googol pennies reach?
To get an idea of the “power” of exponents, investigate a famous problem in
mathematics.
How many times would you have to fold a piece of paper so it reached from

started the
Earth to the Sun, approximately 93 million miles?
1. A ream of paper (500 sheets) is 2 inches thick. What is the thickness of one
sheet of paper?
2. Take a sheet of paper and fold it as many times as you can. For the rest of the

chapter!”
problem you will have to imagine that you could continually fold the piece of
paper.
3. Convert 93 million miles into inches.
4. Each fold represents a doubling of the previous thickness, so each fold
multiplies the paper thickness by 2 x . Use your calculator and trial and error to
find the lowest value of x for which the answer exceeds 93 million miles. How
many folds would it take to reach to the sun?
You were probably unable to fold the paper more than six or seven times, so you
had to imagine the doubling of the thickness mathematically. After viewing the
thickness of the paper after six folds, are you surprised at how few folds it will take
the thickness of the paper to reach the sun? The “power” of 2 is amazing!

{
Applications
1. Nick and Matt are partners in a local health food store. They needed $73,000

“Great variety of
to start the business. They invested in the ratio 3:7, Nick to Matt.
a. How much money did each invest?
b. What percent of the business was owned by Matt? Round to the nearest
tenth of a percent.
2. Tom purchased shares of DuPont for $47.65 per share. He plans to sell the
shares when the stock price rises 20%. At what price will he sell his shares?
3. The top three shareholders in a certain corporation each own s shares of
problems that
stock. The corporation’s ownership is represented by a total of x shares
of stock. Express the percent of the corporation owned by the top three
shareholders algebraically.
4. Maribel purchased 2,000 shares of stock for $25.43 per share. She sold them
will prepare
for $44.10 per share. Express her capital gain to the nearest tenth of a percent.
5. A local hairstylist bought 450 shares of a cosmetics corporation for $33.50 per
share. He sold the shares for $39.01 per share.
a. What was the percent increase in the price per share? Round to the nearest
students for life
outside of school!”
tenth of a percent.
b. What was the total purchase price for the 450 shares?
c. What was the total selling price for the 450 shares?
d. What was the percent capital gain for the 450 shares? Round to the nearest
tenth of a percent.
526 Chapter 8 The Stock Market

71790_ch08_hr_462-529.indd 526 12/26/16 1:41 PM

6. Deanna purchased $24,000 worth of stock and paid her broker a 1% broker 12. Use the candlestick chart to answer the questions below. 6/20/--
Google is derived from the number googol, which is a 1 with 100 zeros following
Really? it. This is equivalent to 10100 . Despite the original accidental change in spelling
fee. She sold the stock when it increased to $29,100 3 years later and used a
discount broker who charged $35 per trade. Compute her net proceeds after
a. What was the approximate low on June 20?
b. What was the approximate high on this date?
24.75
(but not pronunciation), the name still elicits the idea of something very large.
Really! How large is 10100 ? There isn’t a googol of anything on the planet! Let’s take a look
the broker fees were taken out. c. What was the difference between the opening price and
the closing price? 24.50
at some surprisingly large and surprisingly small numbers. 7. Bootle Corp paid Leslie a quarterly dividend payment for $828. Leslie owns
d. What does the red candlestick color indicate?
Revisited Given that 1,000,000 pennies stacked one on top of another reaches about 450 shares of Bootle. What was the quarterly dividend for one share of Bootle? 24.25
1 mile high, how high would 1 googol pennies reach? 8. Aaron owned x shares of a corporation and received an annual dividend of y 13. Lea owns 800 shares of ABC Inc. On April 6, the
To get an idea of the “power” of exponents, investigate a famous problem in dollars. Express the quarterly dividend for one share algebraically. corporation instituted a 5-for-2 stock split. Before the split, 24.00
mathematics. each share was worth $42.60.
9. Zyco Corp pays an annual dividend of $2.10 per share. On Tuesday it closed at a. How many shares did Lea hold after the split?
How many times would you have to fold a piece of paper so it reached from $72 per share with a net change of 10.95. The dividend remained at $2.10 for 23.75
Earth to the Sun, approximately 93 million miles? b. What was the post-split price per share?
several months. c. Show that the split was a monetary nonevent for Lea.
1. A ream of paper (500 sheets) is 2 inches thick. What is the thickness of one a. What was the yield on Tuesday? Round to the nearest tenth of a percent.
sheet of paper? b. At what price did Zyco close on Monday? 14. Gene owns 1,200 shares of XYX Corp. The company instituted a 1-for-10
c. What was the yield at Monday’s close? Round to the nearest tenth of a reverse stock split on November 7. The pre-split market price per share was
2. Take a sheet of paper and fold it as many times as you can. For the rest of the $1.20.
problem you will have to imagine that you could continually fold the piece of percent.
a. How many shares did Gene hold after the split?
paper. 10. Use the table below to answer a-h. b. What was the post-split price per share?
3. Convert 93 million miles into inches. a. What was the difference between the 52-week high and the 52-week low c. Show that the split was a monetary nonevent for Gene.
for one share of AT&T?
4. Each fold represents a doubling of the previous thickness, so each fold b. What was the difference between the day’s high and low for one share of 15. Use the table of closing prices for Microsoft. Round answers to the nearest cent.
multiplies the paper thickness by 2 x . Use your calculator and trial and error to Southern Copper? a. Determine the 3-day simple moving averages.
find the lowest value of x for which the answer exceeds 93 million miles. How c. Which stock had a close that was furthest from the day’s low? b. Determine the 10-day simple moving averages.
many folds would it take to reach to the sun? d. Determine the close on March 2 for JPMorgan Chase.
You were probably unable to fold the paper more than six or seven times, so you e. How many shares of ITT were traded on March 3? Date Close 3-day Average 10-day Average
had to imagine the doubling of the thickness mathematically. After viewing the f. What was the percent net change from March 2 to March 3 for AT&T? 23-May 28.05
thickness of the paper after six folds, are you surprised at how few folds it will take Round to the nearest hundredth of a percent. 27-May 28.44
the thickness of the paper to reach the sun? The “power” of 2 is amazing! g. Which stock had a day’s high that was approximately 30% less than its
28-May 28.18
52-week high?
h. On March 2, there were 19,987,655 shares of JPM traded. What was the 29-May 28.31
difference in the number of shares traded from March 2 to March 3? 30-May 28.32
Applications 2-Jun 27.80
Market Data, As of the Close on March 3
3-Jun 27.31
1. Nick and Matt are partners in a local health food store. They needed $73,000 52-Week 52-Week Sales
Symbol Stock High Low Last Change Volume High Low 4-Jun 27.54
to start the business. They invested in the ratio 3:7, Nick to Matt.
a. How much money did each invest? SCCO Southern Copper 29.53 19.90 22.06 21.79 1,823,761 22.07 22.07 5-Jun 28.30
b. What percent of the business was owned by Matt? Round to the nearest T AT&T 37.50 30.97 37.12 20.01 22,009,008 37.50 37.06 6-Jun 27.49
tenth of a percent. 9-Jun 27.71
ESI ITT Ed Services 7.95 1.93 2.95 20.03 140,466 3.11 2.92
2. Tom purchased shares of DuPont for $47.65 per share. He plans to sell the JPM JP Morgan Chase 70.61 57.07 57.45 11.11 20,987,678 58.11 57.14
10-Jun 27.89
shares when the stock price rises 20%. At what price will he sell his shares? & Co. 11-Jun 27.12
3. The top three shareholders in a certain corporation each own s shares of 12-Jun 28.24
stock. The corporation’s ownership is represented by a total of x shares 11. Use the stock bar chart Daily 13-Jun 29.07
of stock. Express the percent of the corporation owned by the top three to answer the questions 50.0
49.5 16-Jun 28.93
shareholders algebraically. below. 49.0
48.5
4. Maribel purchased 2,000 shares of stock for $25.43 per share. She sold them a. What was the day’s 48.0
open on June 17? 47.5
for $44.10 per share. Express her capital gain to the nearest tenth of a percent. 47.0 Use the following stock market ticker to answer Exercises 16 and 17.
b. What was the 46.5
5. A local hairstylist bought 450 shares of a cosmetics corporation for $33.50 per approximate difference
46.0
share. He sold the shares for $39.01 per share. Volume GE 29.39K@26.13▲1.13 F .67K@12.46▼0.38 C3K@42.15▲ 1.47 T 1.6K@37.12▼1.08
between the day’s high 2.0
a. What was the percent increase in the price per share? Round to the nearest and low on June 18? 1.5
Millions

tenth of a percent. c. On what day was the 1.0


b. What was the total purchase price for the 450 shares? close also the day’s low? 0.5
c. What was the total selling price for the 450 shares? d. Write the approximate
d. What was the percent capital gain for the 450 shares? Round to the nearest 0
volume for June 19. June 16 17 18 19 20
tenth of a percent.
526 Chapter 8 The Stock Market Assessment 527 528 Chapter 8 The Stock Market

71790_ch08_hr_462-529.indd 526 12/26/16 1:41 PM 71790_ch08_hr_462-529.indd 527 12/26/16 1:41 PM 71790_ch08_hr_462-529.indd 528 12/26/16 1:41 PM

Meaningful applications at the end of each chapter require you to apply concepts
that were taught throughout the chapter.

xvi

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Comprehensive Teaching
and Learning Tools
Annotated Instructor’s Edition 9781337271806
The Annotated Instructor’s Edition keeps useful teaching and reference notes, helpful suggestions, and
ready solutions at your fingertips.
Financial Algebra Instructor Companion Website
• Lesson plans
• PowerPoint slides for each lesson
• Workbook answers
• Solutions Manual - Additional resources for use in the classroom or planning your curriculum
Computerized Testbank 9781337271905
An online testbank saves time in effectively assessing your students’ understanding of chapter concepts.
Simply edit, add, delete, or rearrange questions.
Practice Problems for Financial Algebra 9781337271820
The student workbook offers additional resources for mastering algebraic concepts within a financial
context.
MindTap 9781337271851
MindTap® for Gerver and Sgroi’s FINANCIAL ALGEBRA, Second Edition provides you with the tools you
need to better manage your limited time – you can complete assignments whenever and wherever you are
ready to learn with course material specially customized for you by your instructor and streamlined in one
proven, easy-to-use interface. With an array of tools and apps – from note taking to flashcards—you’ll get
a true understanding of course concepts, helping you to achieve better grades and setting the groundwork
for your future courses.

Website - www.cengage.com/financial_alg2e
C Squared Studios, Photodisc/Getty Images


xvii

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Chapter 1

Discretionary Expenses
1-1 Discretionary and Essential Expenses

1-2 Travel Expenses

1-3 Entertainment Expenses

1-4 Vacation Expenses

1-5 Personal Expenses

What do you think Brandeis meant in his quote?


I abhor averages.
I like the individual As you journey through this course, you examine expenses based on
case. A man may needs and wants. Those expenses will change at different stages of
have six meals one your life. Something that may be an unnecessary purchase for you as
day and none the a student now could be a necessity when you are a full-time worker.
next, making an Let’s stop for a minute and compare your financial needs and wants
average of three today to your perceived needs and wants 10 years from now. Make
meals per day, but two lists, each with the column headings “What do I need?” and
that is not a good “What do I want?” as shown below. In one list, write down as many
way to live. current expenses you can think of under each heading. In the other,
—Louis Brandeis, Associate try to imagine what your financial
Supreme Court Justice needs and wants may be in the My Wants and Needs Today
future. Which expenses will change? What do I need? What do I want?
Which will remain the same? How
did you decide which expenses were
mandatory and which expenses you
had flexibility with?
In this chapter, you use statistics My Wants and Needs 10 Years
to examine the types of expenses from Now
you may have now and in the future. What do I need? What do I want?
Keeping a mathematical eye on your
spending will help you become an
informed and skilled consumer.

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Really?

Tspendhis chapter is all about the way we


our money. It’s about expenses
Average
Minutes Spent
that result from our wants and needs. But Leisure Activity Per Day
what about the way we spend our time? Watching TV 168.9
The things we choose to do each day can
Socializing/communicating 42.4
be broken up into the same two categories
as the things we spend our money on— Playing games/computer use 26.7
wants and needs. Certainly, there are Reading 19.6
essential things we absolutely need to Sports/exercise/recreation 17.9
spend time on. There are also things we Relaxing/thinking 16.6
choose to spend our time on based on our All other leisure activities 24.8
wants. Examine these facts on the average
minutes per day Americans spend on
leisure activities as reported by the United these averages? In the chapter opener,
States Bureau of Labor Statistics. you were asked to create lists indicating
Keep in mind that most people “wants/needs” about money spent by
have more leisure time on the weekend you now and by you in 10 years. Now try
than during the week. The time listed in making two lists about time spent—one
the table is an average amount per day for you now and one for you 10 years
regardless of the day of the week. How from now. Do the money-spent and time-
does your daily leisure time compare with spent lists overlap and interact in any way?
© Creatista/www.Shutterstock.com.

Really!

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
1-1 Discretionary and Essential Expenses
A bargain ain’t a bargain unless it’s something you need.
—Sidney Carroll, film and television screenwriter

Objectives Key Terms skewed data set


bimodal
• Identify the difference between gross income
frequency distribution
essential and discretionary disposable income
expenses. essential expense
discretionary expense
• Determine the mean, median,
statistics
Warm-Up
and mode of a data set. Which of the following expressions
data
• Use sigma notation to represent represents the statement “One half the
measures of central
and determine the mean of a sum of x and y”?
tendency
data set. mean a. 0.5(x 1 y) c. x 1 y
• Create and interpret a frequency median 2
distribution table. mode b. 1 ( x 1 y )
2
• Determine the mean, median, subscript
and mode of a data set presented index
in a frequency distribution table. outlier

What Do You Need? What Do You Want?


In the chapter opener, you were asked to make lists indicating your spending
wants and needs now and in the future. When making those lists, you probably
considered your income. Right now, you may be on an allowance or have a
part-time job. In 10 years, you could be a full-time worker, in the military, or
continuing to pursue your education. As your life situation changes, your income,
obligations, and expenses will change as well.
Your income before all taxes are deducted is your gross income. Once the
taxes are removed from that amount, what remains is known as disposable
income. That is, you can dispose of the money (do with it) as you see fit.
Disposable income is used for two types of expenses: essential expenses and
discretionary expenses. An essential expense is one that can’t be eliminated
from your day-to-day life. This might include rent or mortgage payments,
utility bills, medical expenses, loan payments, and more. Although this type of
spending is a necessity, consumers usually look for ways to reduce the amounts.
A discretionary expense is a cost for goods or services that are nonessential. This
could include movie tickets, coffee, magazine subscriptions, and more.
Wise consumers know how to balance discretionary and essential expenses
to live within their means. Often, to do this, consumers use statistics. The
branch of mathematics known as statistics involves the mathematical collection,
organization, study, interpretation, analysis, and reporting of data. Facts that can
be analyzed to obtain more information about a situation are defined as data.

4 Chapter 1 Discretionary Expenses

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
The use of statistics and data can help consumers make responsible decisions to
maintain this balance. Data used to represent “typical” values in certain situations
so that it is easier to make those decisions are referred to as measures of central
tendency. There are three measures of central tendency that you have learned in
previous math courses and are used in this course:
• Mean The “typical” value of a set of scores, is determined by finding the sum
of those scores divided by the number of scores.
• Median The middle score.
• Mode The most frequently occurring item(s).

Skills and Strategies


Both essential and discretionary expenses can vary greatly. Here you learn how to
use some statistical measures to help you make sense of your expenses.

EXAMPLE 1
Alena knows that her morning cup of coffee is most definitely a discretionary
expense. She pays $2.75 for a 9-oz cup and was wondering if that is a
typical price. On Monday, she asked six of her coworkers what they paid
for a 9-oz cup of coffee. Their costs per cup were $2.85, $2.15, $1.95, $3.00,
$2.05, and $2.40. How can Alena compare her expense with those of her
coworkers?

SOLUTION Alena needs to find the mean of the six prices.

2.85 1 2.15 1 1.95 1 3.00 1 2.05 1 2.40


Add, then divide by 6. 5 2.40
6

Notice the fraction bar can be viewed as a grouping symbol that implies
parentheses around both the entire numerator and the entire denominator.
The mean is $2.40. Alena’s expense is 35 cents above the mean. Based solely
on this data, she might want to look around for a less expensive coffee shop in
order to save herself some money on this discretionary expense.

Nora is a college student. She needs to make an essential textbook purchase for  heck Your
C
one of her classes. She researches the cost of the book at her college bookstore, Understanding
some local booksellers, and some online merchants. The prices per book are $128,
$118, $96, $102, $100, $118, $118, and $102. Find the mean of the textbook
prices.

Sigma Notation
Often, mathematicians prefer to use compact notations rather than verbal
definitions to indicate mathematical procedures. This is true for the mean.
We can use the expression xi to represent all of the numbers in a list. This is

1-1 Discretionary and Essential Expenses 5

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
read as “x sub i.” The small number below and to the right of the x is a counter.
It is called a subscript. So, x1 represents the first number in a list. Likewise,
x 2 represents the second number in a list, and so on. There is a mathematical
notation that indicates finding a sum. It is the Greek letter sigma and looks like
this: o. The mean is often symbolized by x, which is read as “x bar.” The formula
for the mean in compact symbolic form is:

1 n
x5 ∑ xi
ni 51

The variable i is called the index. i 5 1 beneath sigma indicates the starting
number and n indicates the ending number in the list where n represents the total
of the numbers or terms to be added.
The formula can be read as follows: the mean is equal to the product of 1/n
and the sum of the numbers in the list.
Finding the product of 1/n and the sum is the same as dividing the sum by n.

EXAMPLE 2
Use the information about coffee prices in Example 1 to represent the formula
for the mean price using a compact notation.

SOLUTION Examine the list of six coffee prices in Example 1. The first amount,
$2.85, can be symbolized by x1. Likewise, x 2 represents the second number in
the list, or $2.15.
The list can be represented as:

$2.85 $2.15 $1.95 $3.00 $2.05 $2.40


x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 x6

The formula for the mean of the coffee prices can be symbolized by the
following.

1 6 1
x5 ∑ xi 5 6 (2.85 1 2.15 1 1.95 1 3.00 1 2.05 1 2.40)
6i 51
2.85 1 2.15 1 1.95 1 3.00 1 2.05 1 2.40
5 5 2.40
6

The mean coffee price is $2.40.

Check Your Addy’s monthly water bills for last year are $27, $31, $30, $26, $25, $27, $37, $33,
Understanding $32, $28, $26, $26. Express the formula for the mean using sigma notation and
calculate the mean water bill for the year.

Extend Your Suppose Addy only wanted the mean of the second through the seventh months.
Understanding Write the formula for this situation in sigma notation.

6 Chapter 1 Discretionary Expenses

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
EXAMPLE 3
Anthony wants to make a discretionary purchase of a basic laptop computer.
He checks the prices of a particular make and model listed by seven
different vendors on a shopping
comparison website. He found these
prices: $850, $798, $2,400, $790, $836,
$700, $780. He computes the mean as
$1,022. This number doesn’t seem to be a
good representation of the data. How can
he find a better representation?

SOLUTION In the prices Anthony found


there is an outlier—a piece of data that
is extremely different from the rest of the
data. When there are outliers, the mean

© Korta/www.Shutterstock.com
is often not a good representation. In
these cases, you can use the median to
better represent the data.
When the mean of the data set is not
equal to the median, this is a skewed
data set. The median is unaffected
by the outlier. If the $2,400 price was $924,000, the median would remain the
same. The median is resistant to extreme numbers.
There are two methods used to find the median depending on whether there
is an even or odd count of numbers. The odd list is addressed here and the
even list is in Example 4. When using either list to find the median, arrange
the values in ascending order (from least to greatest) or descending order (from
greatest to least).
Pair the numbers starting from the ends of the list as shown by the colors. In an
odd count list, circle the middle number that remains after the numbers are
paired.

700 780 790 798 836 850 2400

The median is the circled number. The number of scores below the median
must be the same as the number of scores above the median.
The median is $798. This price is a better representation of the data.

Construct a set of data for a different discretionary expense containing an odd  heck Your
C
number of scores with the same median as found in Example 3. Identify the type Understanding
of expense you chose. Explain how the median is the same as the median in
Example 3, although the rest of the data are different.

1-1 Discretionary and Essential Expenses 7

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
EXAMPLE 4
Suppose that in Example 3, Anthony had only found the first six laptop prices
when he conducted his online search. Determine the median of those prices.

SOLUTION As in Example 3, arrange the numbers in ascending order. Then pair


the numbers. Since there are an even number of scores, there is no number left
alone in the middle. Circle the last two numbers to be paired.

700 790 798 836 850 2400

To find the median, find the mean of the two innermost circled numbers.
798 1 836
Add; then divide by 2. 5 817
2
The median is $817. Again, notice that the number of scores below the median
is the same as the number of scores above the median, and the median is
resistant to extreme scores.

Check Your Construct a set of data for a different discretionary expense containing an even
Understanding number of scores with the same median as found in Example 4. Identify the type
of expense you chose. Explain how the median is the same as that in Example 4,
although the rest of the data are different.

EXAMPLE 5
A survey was conducted of 880 college students attending the same university.
They were offered a list of 10 different Internet service providers and were
asked to select the one they prefer. Can a service provider receiving only 89
votes come out on top?

SOLUTION This can be answered by determining the mode. The mode is often
used with non-numerical variables, such as in a preference survey. A set can
have no mode. If there are two modes, the set is bimodal.
If each of the 880 votes were split evenly among the 10 different Internet
service providers, each would get 88 votes and there would be no mode. If
one provider received 87 votes, another received 89 votes, and everyone else
received 88 votes, the provider with 89 votes could win.

Check Your Construct a data set for a discretionary expense, other than those above, for which
Understanding the mode is 56.

8 Chapter 1 Discretionary Expenses

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Frequency Distributions
In your mathematical studies, you have worked with bar graphs, histograms,
circle graphs, and line graphs. You will now learn about a table that presents
information about central tendency in an easy-to-interpret format. You can use
this table when examining data in order to make decisions about essential and
discretionary expenses.

EXAMPLE 6
Transportation expenses to and from work are considered essential expenses.
Charlie Jane would like to reduce this essential expense by biking to work rather
than taking her car. She found 30 different ads both online and in print for the
make and model of bicycle she wants to purchase. She made a list of the prices
in ascending order.

250, 250, 275, 275, 275, 275, 280, 290, 290, 310, 310, 310, 310, 310, 315, 315,
315, 315, 315, 315, 320, 325, 325, 325, 330, 335, 340, 350, 350, 350

She wants to analyze the prices but is having trouble because there are so many
numbers. How can she organize these prices in a helpful format?

SOLUTION Charlie Jane can set up a frequency distribution. A frequency


distribution is a table that displays each value and its frequency (the number of
times that value appears). The table below lists the price in one column and the
number of times that price appeared in her data in the second column.

Price, p ($) Frequency, f


250 2
275 4
280 1
290 2
310 5
315 6
320 1
325 3
330 1
335 1
340 1
350 3
TOTAL 30

She adds up the numbers in the frequency column to find the total frequency,
which equals the number of pieces of data in her data set. She wants to be sure
that she did not accidentally leave out a price. Because there are 30 prices in the
set, and the sum of the frequencies is 30, Charlie Jane concludes her frequency
distribution is correct.

Use the frequency distribution from Example 6 to find the number of bicycles selling  heck Your
C
for less than $320. Understanding

1-1 Discretionary and Essential Expenses 9

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
EXAMPLE 7
Find the mean of the bicycle prices from Example 6.

SOLUTION Charlie Jane creates another column in her table for the product of
the first two column entries.

Price, p ($) Frequency, f Product, pf


250 2 500
275 4 1,100
280 1 280
290 2 580
310 5 1,550
315 6 1,890
320 1 320
325 3 975
330 1 330
335 1 335
340 1 340
350 3 1,050
TOTAL 30 9,250

The sum of the entries in the third column—9,250—is used to find the mean.
This is the same sum you would find if you added the original 30 prices. Divide
that sum by 30 to find the mean, and round the answer to the nearest cent.

9,250 4 30 ≈ 308.33

The mean of the bicycle prices is $308.33

Check Your What is the mode of the data set for the frequency table in Example 6?
Understanding
© Milkos/www.Shutterstock.com

10 Chapter 1 Discretionary Expenses

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Applications

A bargain ain’t a bargain unless it’s something you need.


—Sidney Carroll, film and television screenwriter

1. Interpret the quote in terms of what you have learned about essential and
discretionary expenses.
2. For most people, health club membership expenses are considered
discretionary. Alli lives in a big city and wants to join a health club. She
researched monthly membership costs and found the following for health
clubs within a 5-mile radius of her apartment.
$65, $50, $44, $86, $90, $50, $35, $110, $70, $50, $35, $60, $56
a. What is the mean monthly membership fee? Round your answer to the
nearest cent.
b. What is the median monthly membership fee?
c. What is the mode monthly membership fee?
3. Kate is a professional musician. She wants to make an essential purchase of an
upgraded used bass guitar for her work. She found the following prices for the
same make and model bass guitar from various sellers:
$699, $599, $699, $680, $590, $720, $650, $800
a. What is the mean price? Round your answer to the nearest cent.
b. What is the median price?
c. What is the mode price?
4. Nick and Liz have decided to move from the city to the suburbs. This means
that they will have to make the essential purchase of a car in order to get
to work. They researched used 2-year-old cars of the same make, model,
condition, and equipped with the same options. They found a website stating
that the average price should be $18,500. These are the prices they were
quoted:
$15,500 $18,800 $16,900 $19,900 $18,000 $21,000
If they continued their search for one more price quote, what would that price
have to be so that the mean of all seven of the car prices would be the same as
the mean quoted on the website?
5. Before the last school year began, it was estimated that the average
discretionary personal expenses each school year for a student attending a
4-year public college were $2,110. This past summer Ashley decided to poll
seven of her friends attending a 4-year public college because she thought that
estimate was low. She made a list of their actual school-year expenses:
$2,800 $1,990 $2,005 $2,400 $1,860 $2,200 $2,000
a. What is the mean of her friends’ personal expenses? Round your answer to
the nearest cent.
b. How does that average compare with the estimate?
c. What would Ashley’s actual personal expenses for that school year have to
be so that her amount and her friends’ amounts together would have an
average of $2,110?

1-1 Discretionary and Essential Expenses 11

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Use the following table to answer questions 6–9.

Monthly Water Bills


Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec
x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 x6 x7 x8 x9 x10 x11 x12
$40 $42 $40 $38 $48 $50 $58 $62 $56 $46 $44 $44

6. Write the formula for the mean water bill for the entire year using sigma
notation and determine that mean. Round your answer to the nearest cent.
7. Write the formula for the mean water bill for the first 6 months of the year
using sigma notation and determine that mean. Round your answer to the
nearest cent.
8. Write the formula for the mean water bill from April through November using
sigma notation and determine that mean. Round your answer to the nearest
cent.
9. Write the sigma notation mean formula for the consecutive 3-month period
that would have the highest mean of the year.
Use the following table to answer questions 10–12.
Elizabeth wants to change cell phone plans. Before contacting the service
provider, she makes a table of her cell phone minutes used over the course of
a week.

Daily Cell Phone Minutes Used


Mon Tues Wed Thurs Fri Sat Sun
x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 x6 x7
38 62 40 10 30 55 65

1 7
10. Round the following value ∑ xi to the nearest minute.
7i 51
Interpret the answer in the context of the problem.
1 5
11. Round the following value ∑ xi to the nearest minute.
4i 52
Interpret the answer in the context of the problem.
12. Write the sigma notation mean formula for the 4 consecutive days that would
have the lowest mean of the week.

12 Chapter 1 Discretionary Expenses

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
13. Airline flights can be either discretionary or essential. For most people, the
price you pay for where you sit in the plane is a discretionary expense. The
seat map for a particular flight is shown here.

The seating options for the color-coded seats are priced as follows:
First Class: $850 Deluxe Premium: $540 Preferred Plus: $400 Preferred: $320 Economy: $280

There are a total of 149 seats on this flight. Although seating prices change
based on a number of factors, answer the questions below based on the prices
listed above.
a. Construct a frequency distribution with column headings “Seat Type,”
“Price,” and “Number of Seats.”
b. If all seats were sold for this flight, what would be the total airline income
for the seats?
c. Determine the mean, median, and mode for seat prices. Round to the
nearest cent.
14. There are many cell phone case options on the market. This discretionary
item comes in a variety of colors, materials, thicknesses, protection levels, and
more. Amit runs a small business that sells computer and phone accessories.
He has kept the following inventory of cell phone case sales for similar model
phones:
$19.99,  $8.99, $35.99, $49.99, $49.99, $39.99, $99.99, $79.99, $35.99,
$19.99, $49.99, $29.99, $49.99, $54.99, $35.99, $49.99, $19.99,  $8.99,
$29.99, $35.99
a. Write the formula for the mean in sigma notation and use it to calculate
the mean cell phone case price. Round your answer to the nearest cent.
b. Construct a frequency distribution for the data.
c. Use the frequency distribution to determine the mean.
d. Use the frequency distribution to determine the
median and the mode.
15. Medications are essential expenses. DeWitt has Price Frequency
composed a price list of antibiotics available at $4.10 3
different pharmacies in his neighborhood. In $4.85 2
reviewing his list, he can’t find the number of $8.00 x
pharmacies selling the antibiotics for $8. Examine
$12.00 1
the frequency distribution for the prices. Write an
expression for the mean. $12.50 2

1-1 Discretionary and Essential Expenses 13

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
1-2 Travel Expenses
Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.
—Anonymous

Objectives Key Terms Warm-Up


• Determine and interpret cumulative cumulative frequency a. What percent of 40 is 8.2?
frequency. relative frequency b. 66 is 55% of what number?
• Determine and interpret relative spreadsheet c. Write a literal equation that
frequency. cell represents x% of z is equal to y.
relative cumulative
• Determine and interpret relative
frequency
cumulative frequency.
percentile
• Model a situation using a percentile rank
spreadsheet.
• Determine and interpret percentiles.

What Will It Cost to Get There?


Examine the following facts reported by the U.S. Department of Transportation
and the U.S. Travel Association:
• Over 300 million U.S. residents use some form of transportation each day.
• There are 128.3 million commuters in the United States.
• 3.3 million people travel at least 50 miles to work one-way.
• The net income of all U.S. airline carriers for 2015 was $18,922,412,000.
• Spending by travelers in the United States averages approximately $2.5 billion
a day, $104.2 million an hour, $1.7 million a minute, and $28,333 a second.
A travel expense can be either essential or discretionary depending on the
situation. Commuting costs for getting to and from work are essential. Airfare for
a flight to a beach resort would be discretionary.
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics conducted a survey to gather
information about long-distance travel during the summer in the United States.
They define “long distance” as a trip
of 50 miles or longer and “summer Summer Travel
travel” as trips taking place between
Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day Long Distance # of Long-Distance
weekend. In a particular study, they Miles (m) Summer Trips
gathered data on over 650,000,000 long- 50 # m , 250 512,460,000
distance summer trips in a single year. 250 # m , 500 72, 270,000
Examine this frequency distribution that
500 # m , 1000 32,850,000
illustrates the number of trips according
to the one-way distance from home. m $ 1000 32,850,000

14 Chapter 1 Discretionary Expenses

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
At a glance, you would easily be able to identify the number of long-distance
trips for any of the four mileage categories. But what would it take to answer these
questions:
• How many of the trips were less than 1000 miles?
• What percentage of the trips were greater than or equal to 500 miles?
While the computation is not difficult to do, this section introduces you to
two variations of the frequency table known as the cumulative frequency table and
the relative frequency table. Each of these will extend the information given in the
basic frequency table that you worked with in Section 1-1, so that questions like
those above can be easily answered.

Skills and Strategies


Here you learn how to interpret and construct two new tables as you examine
vacation travel and vacation travel expenses.

EXAMPLE 1
How many of the trips listed in the Summer Travel table (frequency
distribution table) on page 14 were less than 1000 miles?

SOLUTION In the Summer Travel Table, the column labeled “# of Long-Distance


Summer Trips” is the frequency. Those numbers were compiled by sorting the
lengths of over 650,000,000 trips into the four mileage categories. To answer
this question, you need to add a new category to the table that lists cumulative
frequency. This column is created by keeping a running total of all frequencies
that are less than or equal to the frequency of that particular interval. The new
table is known as a cumulative frequency table and looks like this:

Summer Travel
Long-Distance # of Long-Distance Cumulative
Miles (m) Summer Trips Frequency
50 # m , 250 512,460,000 512,460,000
250 # m , 500 72, 270,000 584,730,000
500 # m , 1000 32,850,000 617,580,000
m $ 1000 32,850,000 650,430,000

The cumulative frequency column in this table tells the reader the number
of trips that are less than or equal to the longest distance in the interval. The
number of trips less than 1000 is the sum of the frequencies in the first three
rows. This is the cumulative frequency for the interval 500 ≤ m < 1000. There
were 617,580,000 summer trips taken that are greater than or equal to 50 miles
and less than 1000 miles in length.

How many trips less than 500 miles in length were taken?  heck Your
C
Understanding

1-2 Travel Expenses 15

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
EXAMPLE 2
The Flyt Travel website reported the Round-Trip Airline
following airfare booking expenses for Ticket Cost # of Bookings
the week of July 4th. $100–199.99 70
What proportion of the tickets sold had $200–299.99 120
a cost greater than or equal to $400 and
$300–399.99 310
less than or equal to $499.99?
$400–499.99 282
SOLUTION To answer this question $500–599.99 168
and questions related to it for other $600–699.99 150
intervals, you should create a new $700–799.99 136
column to indicate relative frequency.
Relative frequency is the ratio of the $800–899.99 80
frequency of a particular interval to the $900–999.99 96
total number of pieces of data collected. $1000 and above 22
The relative frequency represents the
proportion of the data that falls in a particular interval. It is expressed as a
decimal rounded to whatever degree of accuracy is needed.
Relative frequency can easily be written as a percent. The relative frequency
formulas are given here where rf is the relative frequency, f is the frequency,
and N is the total number of frequencies.
Relative frequency expressed as a decimal:
f
rf 5
N
Relative frequency expressed as a percent:
f
rf 5 3 100
N
To set up the relative
frequency table, add a Relative Frequency
new column. The total Round-Trip Airline # of (rounded to nearest
number of frequencies Ticket Cost Bookings thousandth)
represents the total number $100–199.99 70 0.049
of bookings reported by $200–299.99 120 0.084
Flyt Travel. The sum of
$300–399.99 310 0.216
the bookings listed in the
table is 1,434. Use this $400–499.99 282 0.197
to determine the relative $500–599.99 168 0.117
frequency. $600–699.99 150 0.105
Ideally, the sum of the $700–799.99 136 0.095
relative frequencies should $800–899.99 80 0.056
be 1. But, you may get a $900–999.99 96 0.067
number very close to 1
$1000 and above 22 0.015
because of rounding.
Total 1,434
The relative frequency for
the $400–499.99 interval is
0.197. This represents 19.7% of the total number of bookings reported.

Check Your What percent of the total number of bookings fall within the range of $700–899.99?
Understanding

16 Chapter 1 Discretionary Expenses

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Spreadsheets
A spreadsheet is an electronic worksheet that can be used to explore,
manipulate, analyze, and interpret data. Spreadsheets allow you to enter
data into columns and rows. The intersection of a column and a row is a
cell. Cells can contain numbers, words, or formulas. While the structure of a
formula may differ based on the software, formulas have a fundamental algebraic
basis. In spreadsheet formulas you use an * (asterisk) for the multiplication
symbol and a / (forward slash) for the division symbol. You do not use spaces
around symbols.
Examine the spreadsheet below. It contains all of the data from the frequency
table in Example 2 with an added row labeled “Total.”

A B C
Relative Frequency
Round-Trip Airline (rounded to nearest
1 Ticket Cost #of Bookings thousandth)
2 $100–199.99 70 0.049 Cell C2
3 $200–299.99 120 0.084
4 $300–399.99 310 0.216
5 $400–499.99 282 0.197
6 $500–599.99 168 0.117
7 $600–699.99 150 0.105
8 $700–799.99 136 0.095
9 $800–899.99 80 0.056
10 $900–999.99 96 0.067
11 $1000 and above 22 0.015
12 Total 1434

5B21B31B41B51B61B71B81B91B101B11

The entries in cells A1 through A12, B1, and C1 are row and column
labels. They are not mandatory in a spreadsheet but they help to make sense
of the data. It is important to recognize that cells may contain numerical labels
such as the ones in column A, but those cells cannot be used for numerical
calculations. The frequencies in cells B2 through B11 have been input by hand.
All of the other entries have been calculated using spreadsheet formulas. The
entry in cell B12 is the sum of the frequencies in cells B2 to B11. A formula
can be stored in cell B12 to calculate the sum. If B12 represents the sum, the
equation needed is B12 5B21B31B41B51B61B71B81B91B101B11. You
enter the right side of the equation into the cell beginning with the 5 symbol as
shown above.
Spreadsheets have built-in formulas to save time. The long sum formula can
be replaced by the formula 5SUM(B2:B11), where B2 indicates the cell of the first
entry in the list, B11 indicates the cell of the last entry in the list, and the colon
indicates to add the cell entries in B2 through B11. You can see how this would
make the formula entry for a sum a lot easier, especially if you are working with a
large data set.

1-2 Travel Expenses 17

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Another random document with
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DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least


the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,


some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR


MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO


This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second


showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
“We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I


came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE


FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE


BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE


LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI


Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK


BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT


SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA


To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN

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