EDITED BY BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HOUSEHOLD ECONOMICS, TEACHERS COLLEGE, HOUSEHOLD BY KATHARINE F. BALL, M.A. VOCATIONAL ADVISER FOR WOMEN, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA AND MIRIAM E. WEST, M.A. TEACHER OF MATHEMATICS, GIRLS VOCATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL, MINNEAPOLIS VIMU COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY EDUCATION DEPT. Electrotyped and Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company PREFACE THERE is a widespread conviction that girls need more training in the kind of mathematics used in everyday life than is afforded in the traditional courses. The complaint is made that girls fail to reason correctly when confronted by practical problems; that they lack skill and foresight in transactions involving expenditures of money; that they do not understand how to make approximations, how to interpret graphs-in a word, that their "mathematics does not function." To remedy this condition involves not necessarily more training but different training, as well as a reorganization of the mathematics courses to meet the needs of the students. Since one of the most important needs of girls is an intelligent understanding of home problems, the authors have used the subject matter of home economics for their contribution to the reorganization of arithmetic courses. The same methods might well be applied to subject matter chosen from other realms of experience, and the authors hope to extend their work into other fields to meet other needs. The purposes of the book may be stated as follows: a. To enable girls to understand and to interpret the economic problems in their own homes. b. To develop skill in the computations and the methods of reasoning involved in everyday affairs so that arithmetic may become a tool in effective living. c. To make girls readily see controlling number relations in practical situations. The family budget forms the basis for the organization of the subject matter, thus emphasizing the economic aspect of homemaking. The material falls naturally into six sections. The first section is devoted to a study of the principles of budget-making and methods of keeping simple accounts. This is followed by a study of each of the five commonly accepted family budget divisions, viz.: 541296 5 |