Vibe Coding a Corporate Fine
Equivalence Calculator

The Problem

In a Sociology of Deviance course, an assignment inspired by Ermann & Lundman (2001) required students to contextualize corporate penalties by calculating the proportional equivalent for an average American household. Students consistently struggled with the arithmetic required to convert multi-billion dollar revenues and multi-million dollar fines into accurate ratios. Previously, 10 out of 70 students lost points on their assignment due to calculation errors, which created friction and distracted from the core sociological learning objective.

The Process

The solution utilized “vibe coding,” or the process of describing pedagogical goals and assignment logic to an AI to generate a functional, single-page web application without writing manual code. The system was designed with the following parameters:

• Inputs: Corporation name, annual revenue (with a millions/billions toggle to eliminate zero-entry errors), and the three most recent corporate fines.
• Constant: Hardcoded 2024 US median household income ($83,730).
• Contextual Output: The application translated the raw mathematical ratio into a relatable financial penalty, ranging from the cost of a single grape for micro-fines, to a $45 local littering ticket, up to tiered speeding violations.
• Pedagogical Guardrails: The logic included an automated warning system. If a calculated fine exceeded the maximum $300 speeding ticket benchmark, the tool prompted the student to verify their input magnitude or explain the anomaly in their final write-up.

The Implementation

The resulting HTML and JavaScript code was deployed as a standalone tool. It was hosted on this website and embedded directly into the learning management system, providing immediate student access without secondary logins or complex software requirements.