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CHARLOTTE – If you've ever wondered how the math you learned in school plays a role in your everyday life, researchers say it happens more than you think. Now they're working to make math more practical for students to solve problems.

“All people who go through a math curriculum are trained to find the right answer, the one and only answer, and in the real world, when you use mathematics, it's a tool to find good answers and better answers but not necessarily the one right answer,” said Kenneth Chelst, of the MINDSET Project.

The idea behind the project is to teach math with a business focus that will improve a student's problem solving skills and attitudes toward math.

“Instead of introducing a math concept, we introduce our applications, problems that students would encounter in their daily lives so they get a sense of what mathematics can be used for,” Robert Young, of MINDSET, said.

The project is part of a $3 million, five-year grant funded by the National Science Foundation and created by researchers from North Carolina State University. Several states already use the curriculum and now researchers want to test it out in North Carolina.

North Carolina requires high school students take four years of math. For some students, that means calculus or precalculus, but for others, it's not always the best option.

“One of the biggest complaints we get from companies is they can't find a labor force where the basic employees have sufficient math skills so they do a lot of remedial education,” said Young.

Young says companies like McDonalds and UPS already use the techniques.

“If the students have this then we can advertise 'put your plant here, we'll save you money' because the students graduating from our high schools have the basic skills in mathematics as applied to production and manufacturing,” he said.

Young says implementing the MINDSET Project in schools could be a winning solution for both students and the economy.

Creators of the MINDSET Project hope to bring the program before the state board of education in the coming months. Board members would have to adopt the curriculum before it could be used as an alternative to current course material.