"Ways and Means, 1935" is a RTTP game for basic college mathematics (quantitative literacy) classes. The central historical focus is the legislative debates in Congress in 1935 surrounding what became the Social Security Act of 1935. The questions for the game's players are, how much will social programs cost? Where will the funds come from to pay for the new programs? Should there even be any new programs? What assumptions are best for making these calculations? How can goals be justified with numbers? Which calculations are most persuasive?

The nature of the conflict in the game is that some members of Congress oppose and some support the various social legislation proposals ; some favor a narrow social security program, others a more expansive one, and some are absolutely opposed to any such legislation. In the game, the "winners" are the players who best use math to achieve their legislative goals; the game will be structured so that policy debates are funneled into estimations of costs over time. Victory likely goes to the faction that makes its goals most appealing. thru the use of verifiable mathematical calculations, to reporters and other indeterminate players.

The mathematical content covered includes population growth, inflation, interest, and distributions/histograms/means of ages and incomes, as well as actuarial projections of future life expectancy and estimates of future economic growth. The target course is a mathematics course at the quantitative-literacy level, with a prerequisite of pre-college algebra.

• public-half.zip This file contains the public half of the instructor's manual. 505 kb. July 2012.
• nonpublic-half.zip This file includes student role sheets, spreadsheets, and the non-public half of the instructor's manual. 1479 kb, July 2012. Contact Andrew Ross (aross15@emich.edu) for the password.
• income-age-unemployment-dow-cpi-gdp-1935.xlsx is a spreadsheet with useful data, some of which is needed and some of which is optional:
  • a histogram of income levels,
  • histograms of the age distribution in 1880, 1890, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930
  • history of the unemployment rate, 1890-1934
  • history of the Dow Jones index and CPI values, 1885-1934
  • history of GDP and GDP per capita, real and nominal, 1790-1934
  • history of federal government speding, 1901-1934
  • history of hyperinflation in the Weimar republic, 1914-1923 (monthly)
  • history of unemployment rate by job sector, 1900-1934
  Contact Andrew Ross (aross15@emich.edu) for the file.
• WaysAndMeansGameBook-2012-06-10.docx is a 78-page MS Word document that is the gamebook. It was never officially published. Contact Andrew Ross (aross15@emich.edu) for the file.

A chapter in an MAA book was published about this mini-game. See: Curran, John and Ross, Andrew. (2019) "Implementing Social Security: A Historical Role-Playing Game", chapter 12 in "Mathematics and Social Justice: Perspectives and Resources for the College Classroom" MAA Volume 60, edited by Lily Khadjavi and Gizem Karaali. https://bookstore.ams.org/clrm-60/ ISBNs: 978-1-4704-4926-1 (print); 978-1-4704-5319-0 (online) Dttps://doi.org/10.1090/clrm/060 MathSciNet review: 3967051

This page was formerly at https://sites.google.com/site/reactingscience/games/ways-and-means but that seems dead now. This might work: https://web.archive.org/web/20201010072533/https://sites.google.com/site/reactingscience/games/ways-and-means or the whole science-based games website at https://web.archive.org/web/20220301211121/https://sites.google.com/site/reactingscience/games