MODULE 4

MATHEMATICS AS A TOOL FOR BUSINESS AND FINANCE

LESSON NO. 4
LESSON TITLE Product Tagging
Specific Learning During the learning engagement, the learners should be able to:
Outcomes:
1. Verify if a UPC of an item is valid or invalid mathematically;
2. Calculate the International Standard Book Number;
3. Construct his/her own QR codes given a topic or context; and
5. Decode certain QR codes that are used in public.
TEACHING LEARNING ACTIVITIES

PROCESSING
Activity 1. Product Tagging
Do an online survey or searching about the prices on particular items listed below in the three
different shops. Lazada, Shopee and Zalora. Upon doing the survey they will fill in the given
table.

PRICES LISTED
Products
Shopee Lazada Zalora
1. Xiaomi Poco 3
Mobile Phone
2. Pants (of the same
brands)
3. Shoulder Bag (of
the same brands)
4. Books (of the same
brands)
5. Backpack (of the
same brands)

Highlight the shop that has a lowest price per given item?

LESSON PROPER

Product Tags are used for the easy identification of products as well as for tracking and
inventory purposes. When product tags are typed or scanned into a computer or transmitted in
some other fashion, there is a chance that one or more digits in the number will change or
rearrange as they move from one location to another.

Here are the most common types of transmission errors with examples and relative frequencies
of occurrence.

Relative Transmitted
Error Type Actual Number
Frequency Error
Single digit 79.1% 302455 302955
Transposition 10.2% 302455 302545
Jump transposition 0.8% 302455 305425
Twin 0.5% 302455 302433
Phonetic 0.5% 302455 132455
Jump twin 0.3% 303455 202455

Any of these errors may occur during transmission. The receiver can, of course, try
contacting the sender to check but this may not always be possible. This scenario gives rise
to the development of methods by which the receiver can recognize when a product tag has
been transmitted correctly. Some of these methods fall under the category called check digit
schemes. One example is a system using error-correcting codes, which are able to identify
errors and then correct them automatically.
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 Most check digit schemes append an extra digit or digits (the check digits) to the product tag
and then use the digits to check for transmission error. If an error is detected, the item is then
rechecked until the correct tag is read.

To investigate the error-detection capabilities of different product tagging schemes, the

Universal Product Code

Does the following look familiar to you? Before we will learn how to determine if
a code is valid or invalid, let us watch
first the following videos on how
barcodes work and how to read it. Please
use the links below to watch the videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPuT
ZMp-HE8&t=68s (how to read barcodes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6aR
1k-ympo (how barcodes work)

This Universal Product Code (UPC), is a type of code printed on retail product
packaging to aid in identifying a particular item. It consists of two parts – the machine-
readable barcode, which is a series of unique black bars, and the unique 12-digit
number beneath it.

The purpose of UPCs is to make it easy to identify product features, such as the brand
name, item, size, and color, when an item is scanned at checkout. In fact, that’s why
they were created in the first place – to speed up the checkout process at grocery stores.
UPCs are also helpful in tracking inventory within a store or warehouse.

In a twelve- digit , the first digit identifies the type of product. The
following table lists the different values of and when each is used:

Specific Use
0 General groceries
2 Meat and procedures
3 Drugs and health products
4 Non-food items
5 Coupons
6,7 Other items
1,8,9 Reserved for future use

The next set containing five digits identifies the manufacturer while the
succeeding set with five digits identifies the product.

In the bar code above, 6 is the type of product, 39382 is the manufacturer identification
number, and 00039 is the item number. In general, every item the manufacturer sells, including
every size of the packaging and every repackaging of the item, needs a different item code. For
example, a 12-ounce can of soda needs a different item number than a 16-ounce bottle version,
as does a 6 pack of 12-ounce cans, a 12-pack, a 24 can case, and so on. It is the job of the UPC
coordinator to keep track of all these numbers.

The last digit of the UPC is called a check digit. This digit lest the system determine if
the number has been scanned correctly or not. Given the eleven-digit string , the
check digit is appended such that the whole twelve-digit “codeword” satisfies:

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 = 0 (mod 10)

Each time the scanner scans an item, it performs this calculation. How the check digit it
calculates is different from the check digit it reads, the scanner knows that something went
wrong and the item needs to be re-scanned.

Illustration 1:

The UPC 0-53600-10054- 0 is valid because the following calculation results in a true
statement (40 = 0(mod 10)):

0 (mod 10)

Illustration 2:

The UPC 3-70501-09110-4 is invalid because the following calculation results in a false
statement (39

0 (mod 10)

For more information, watch the video shown by the link below on how to validate a given
Universal Product Code.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1QMouEF1JM

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 ACTIVITY 2. UPC
Direction: Validate the given UPC below.

1. 5-12345-67890

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International Standard Book Number

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier
which is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the
International ISBN Agency. The nine-digits of the ISBN represent information about the book
including the language, publisher, and title. To guard against errors, the nine-digit string is
encoded as a ten-digit “codeword” . The appended tenth digit is a check digit
chosen so that the whole ten-digit codeword satisfies:

That is, the weighted sum is evenly divisible by 11. If should be equal to 10, an X is used.
The ISBN code can detect any single and double error created by the transposition of two
digits.

visit this link to learn more:

In the ISBN 0-8218-2626-X, the 0 indicates that the book was published in either the United
States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, or Canada. The second string 8218 identifies
the publishing company. It is the code for the American Mathematical Society. The third string
2626 is the number that is given to each book the corresponding company publishes; the book
should be the 2,626th book that was published by the AMS since the introduction of the ISBN.
The las part, X, is the check digit; it is the same as the number 10.

Illustration 3:

The ISBN 0-13-088976-8 is valid because the following calculation results in a true statement
(352 0 (mod11)):

11)
Example:
Consider the ISBN 0-387-94225-C. Find the value of the check digit C.

Solution:

To find C, the following equation is solved:

The only digit C that solves the equation is C = 4:

Hence, the complete ISBN is 0-387-94225-4

Since January 1, 2007, ISBNs have contained thirteen digits. The ISBN-13 check digit must
range from 0 to 9 and must be such that the sum of all the thirteen digits, each multiplied by its
(integer) weight, alternating between 1 and 3, is a multiple of 10, That is,

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Illustration 4:

The ISBN-13 check digit C of 978-0-306-40615-C is calculated as follows:

9+21+8+0+3+0+6+12+0+18+1+15+C

The only digit C that solves this equation is C = 7:

How to calculate check digit of ISBN?

Visit and watch these links:

for more information on how to calculate check digit of ISBN.

ACTIVITY 3. ISBN
Direction: Calculate the check digits of the following ISBN.

1. 978-0-545-56747-D

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Can you tell what have you observe in the images below?

A B C

Defining the Quick Response Code

The Quick Response code (QR code) was invented in japan by Toyota subsidiary Denso-
Wave in 1994 to track vehicles during the manufacturing process. It was designed to allow
high-speed component scanning. It has since become one of the most popular product-tagging
schemes.

Unlike the one-dimensional UPC scanned by a narrow beam of light to extract data, the
QR code is detected as a 2-dimensional digital image by a semi-conductor image sensor. The
sensor locates the three distinctive squares at the corners of the image, and use a smaller square
near the fourth corner to normalize the image for size, orientation, and angle of viewing. The
small dots are then converted to binary numbers and their validity checked with an error-
correcting code.

You can view on the link: https://youtu.be/zZXCt1Ud_zE, the discussion of the Quick
Response Code.

Note: The amount of data that can be stored in the QR code symbol depends on all the data
type, version, and error-correction level. The higher the error-correction level, the less
correction capacity.

Scan this QR Code for further understanding in the use of QR Codes.

The following table lists the approximate error-correction capability at each of four levels.

Percentage of “codewords”
Level
'that can be restored

L (Low) 7
M (Medium) 15
Q (Quartile) 25
H (High) 30

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 Activity 4: “To Scan Is to Believe”
The students will scan the QR codes listed below and respectively write down what are the
contents (titles)

1. Answer: _____________________________________________

2. Answer: _____________________________________________

3. Answer: _____________________________________________

4. Answer: _____________________________________________

5. Answer: _____________________________________________

ASSESSMENTS 1. Below is a UPC for a certain product. Find the missing digit.
0-28500-11070- ___.

2. Complete the ISBN that start as 0-7803-10525- ____.

3. Create your own QR codes respectively containing the following:

(Hint: You can learn how to create your own QR code if you know what’s in
Activity 4 QR # 5… Or try watching any youtube video on how to make your own
QR codes)

4. Select any product, locate the code tag, and verify whether it is valid or
invalid.
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RESOURCES: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6aR1k-ympo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPuTZMp-HE8&t=68s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLvm0gZDSd0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qcrDnJg-98&t=15s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WstjjL5CPqk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1QMouEF1JM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPPySjEOa-w
https://youtu.be/zZXCt1Ud_zE
https://youtu.be/qkDqarg5jfY
https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/QR-code-quick-response-code

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