ABSTRACT
The Small Business Association is an economics/math project in which groups of students make and operate stores for one day, donating the profits to a charity of their choice. It lasts approximately 6 weeks if taught 3 days a week. The computations required to solve these problems are not ends unto themselves, but steps to help students gather the data needed to justify their decisions. Problem solving is always goal-directed behavior. In an ill-structured problem such as "design a store," the solver needs to decompose the original goal into narrower subgoals. The successful solver then applies a series of actions that will achieve the subgoals and ultimately the larger goal.
