A friend of mine is trying to figure out the answer to this problem, and for the life of me I couldn't help her. It seems fairly straightforward, but I've never encountered a question of this form and I'm not quite certain what it's asking. She called me a MATH GENIUS, and I don't want to lose the title. If anyone could help me, I'd greatly appreciate it!

Given that FV = 35t + 200, for what interest rate is this the equation of future value (in dollars) as a function of time t (in years)?

What the heck does it want?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_value
extremely straightforward

So does that mean that the interest rate is .175 (17.5%)? It can't possibly be THAT straightforward.

it must be... mba students are for the most part rather brain dead when it comes to math (and everything else but thats the oppinion of an engineering student so it might be a bit unimpartial)

Well, I'm an engineer too - and I hear where you're coming from

Can anyone here verify whether or not 17.5% is actually the correct answer?

Wiki states that FV = PV * (1+rt)

Since we are given that FV = 35t + 200, we can divide both values by 200 to get 200 * (1 + .175t). So we end up with FV = 200 * (1 + .175t) which means r (interest) = 17.5%? I'm completely pulling that out of the air. 17.5% is a LOT of interest.

EDIT: Apparently, that was the correct answer. If anyone wants to help, she's got one other one, but to be honest, I almost want to say that the problem is worded incorrectly/is missing information:

At auction on 3 month T-bills were sold at a discount of 6.490%. What was the simple annual yield? (Round your answer to the nearest 0.001%.)