Prescripted
How should pharmaceutical companies decide what to develop?
Students will
- Given the graph of demand for a certain medication, write a linear function and interpret the slope in context
- Assign a value for how important a drug is, and write a linear equation to model the “total social benefit”
- Using the demand function and price, write and graph the quadratic equation for a medication’s revenue
- Use the parabola to determine the revenue-maximizing price and corresponding revenue
- Understand how the size of the market and price elasticity determine the revenue a pharmaceutical company expects to make
- Discuss strategies that might encourage companies to develop medications for more important conditions
Before you begin
Students should be able to write a linear equation given a graph, and interpret the slope as a unit rate in context, e.g. “the number of additional people who will opt not to buy a drug for every dollar that its price increases.” In addition to linear functions, the lesson also includes quadratic functions. A prior understanding of quadratics is helpful but is not necessary. In fact, the lesson could be used to introduce quadratic functions, and in particular as the product of two linear functions.Common Core Standards
Content Standards
Mathematical Practices
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