Interest Calculator

Interest Calculator - Amanda Chaney

Application	Commentary
	My project is an amplified version of the interest application, based on a story of a piggy bank getting a loan and starting a savings account. My application will help people learn the value of saving money and the power of a seemingly insignificant 5% interest on a loan. The original application was just a calculator with a simple graphic of money spinning around a wheel. I added two short animations of a piggy bank going to the bank and getting a loan/savings account in order to get a boat. The actual calculator and basic programming of my application will be the same as the original. application.
My math uses the math of interest with both savings accounts and loans. Interest is the fee that either the bank pays you to keep your money there or the fee that you pay the bank to get a loan. With a savings account you put a set amount of money into a bank account at an interval, such as every month. The equation for calculating how much money you will have in your savings account after a set amount of time is: A=PMT((1+APR/n)^(ny)-1/ (APR/n) ), where PMT is the amount of money you deposit at each interval, APR is the interest rate (in decimals), n is the number of deposits you make per year, and y is the number of years your savings account is for. So when you plug all of those variables into the equation you can find A, the total amount of money that you will have in your savings account after n years. For a loan the equation is different because you’re calculating how much you pay per month, and you already know how much you took out. PMT= (P(APR/n)/1-(1+APR/n)^(-n*y)), where PMT is your monthly payment, APR is the interest rate, n is the number of payments you make per year, and y is the number of years you want to pay off your loan in. Both equations are simple enough once you know them and the application will allow you to plug in the variables and it will calculate the answers for you.
The art and graphics portion of my project is mainly an animation of a piggy bank going to a bank and getting a loan and/or savings account. I made the piggy bank graphics on Photoshop by taking a picture of a piggy bank off the internet and tracing over and adding a watercolor filter to it. The effect is rather cartoony, rather than using an actual picture. I animated my graphics on flash by using armatures and motion tweens in nested movie clips. The upside of the nested movie clips is that the timeline won’t be as cluttered and therefore won’t interfere with the code. IThe actual animating of the piggy bank was the hardest part of the project, as I wanted to draw the piggy bank walking, dancing and receiving/giving money. It was majorly time-consuming, but the end result was really great.
The programming for my application includes the original work and some additions that I added in. The original coding for the math portion, in which the application calculates interest was kept the same. I added some gotoandplay functions so I could have a title page with buttons for each calculator and the calculate buttons will cue the animation to play. The original programming that makes the calculator work is var A:Number= PMT((Math.pow(1+APR/n,nY)-1)/(APR/n)); This is programming language for PMT times the 1+APR/n to (n*y) -1, all of that over APR/n. So the original equation for a savings account is then understood by the application so that it can do the math for you.

Application

Commentary

My project is an amplified version of the interest application, based on a story of a piggy bank getting a loan and starting a savings account. My application will help people learn the value of saving money and the power of a seemingly insignificant 5% interest on a loan. The original application was just a calculator with a simple graphic of money spinning around a wheel. I added two short animations of a piggy bank going to the bank and getting a loan/savings account in order to get a boat. The actual calculator and basic programming of my application will be the same as the original. application.

My math uses the math of interest with both savings accounts and loans. Interest is the fee that either the bank pays you to keep your money there or the fee that you pay the bank to get a loan. With a savings account you put a set amount of money into a bank account at an interval, such as every month. The equation for calculating how much money you will have in your savings account after a set amount of time is: A=PMT*((1+APR/n)^(n*y)-1/ (APR/n) ), where PMT is the amount of money you deposit at each interval, APR is the interest rate (in decimals), n is the number of deposits you make per year, and y is the number of years your savings account is for. So when you plug all of those variables into the equation you can find A, the total amount of money that you will have in your savings account after n years. For a loan the equation is different because you’re calculating how much you pay per month, and you already know how much you took out. PMT= (P(APR/n)/1-(1+APR/n)^(-n*y)), where PMT is your monthly payment, APR is the interest rate, n is the number of payments you make per year, and y is the number of years you want to pay off your loan in. Both equations are simple enough once you know them and the application will allow you to plug in the variables and it will calculate the answers for you.

The art and graphics portion of my project is mainly an animation of a piggy bank going to a bank and getting a loan and/or savings account. I made the piggy bank graphics on Photoshop by taking a picture of a piggy bank off the internet and tracing over and adding a watercolor filter to it. The effect is rather cartoony, rather than using an actual picture. I animated my graphics on flash by using armatures and motion tweens in nested movie clips. The upside of the nested movie clips is that the timeline won’t be as cluttered and therefore won’t interfere with the code. IThe actual animating of the piggy bank was the hardest part of the project, as I wanted to draw the piggy bank walking, dancing and receiving/giving money. It was majorly time-consuming, but the end result was really great.

The programming for my application includes the original work and some additions that I added in. The original coding for the math portion, in which the application calculates interest was kept the same. I added some gotoandplay functions so I could have a title page with buttons for each calculator and the calculate buttons will cue the animation to play. The original programming that makes the calculator work is var A:Number= PMT*((Math.pow(1+APR/n,n*Y)-1)/(APR/n)); This is programming language for PMT times the 1+APR/n to (n*y) -1, all of that over APR/n. So the original equation for a savings account is then understood by the application so that it can do the math for you.