Pencils, Pens, and Profit: Using Linear Programming to Maximize Profit at the School Store

With the benefit of what I learned from my first year in the math fair, I developed a much more complex project in my 6th grade year. Two things made a big difference here: my sister and I ran the school store, so I had all the data readily available, and I had a math tutor, who was earning his Masters degree in math education. He helped me think about not only what would be an interesting project, but also what would be a competitive project. I learned the basics of linear programming and applied it to all of the items we offered in our school store to determine which was the most profitable.