You're A Mathematical Genius, You Know!
?>
Download eBooks and Software
 The Lotto Black Book
This Radical Approach To An Online Sales Letter Converts In The 3-5%... We've Never Seen Something Like This Since The Early Days Of 2004-2005 And I'm Sure You Haven't Either... We Convert More Than Our Competition And We Pay Out More... Try It!
Paleo Recipe Book - Brand New Paleo Cookbook
Brand New Paleo Diet Cookbook With Over 370 Recipes. Pays 70% Commission On This High-quality, Easy To Sell Product. Get Banners And Promotional Material At Http://paleorecipebook.com/affiliates.html
Real Writing Jobs
New & Improved Pricing Structure With Multiple Price Points, Downsells, And Upsells. Doing Better Than Ever! Plus, We Keep Emailing All Interested Users With Your Affiliate Link In The Emails To Make Sure You Get Credit! Realwritingjobs.com/affiliates.php
Articles > Self Improvement and MotivationYou're A Mathematical Genius, You Know!
by: Murdo Macleod
This may come as a surprise to you.
But the truth is, you really are good at mathematics.
You see, every day you solve complex problems by breaking them down into tiny little "baby steps".
And just like the world's most powerful computer or the greatest ever mathematical prodigy, it's this step-by-step process that enables you to do practically anything.
Let's see this process in action with a couple of examples:
* * * Example 1 - Calculating the Dreaded Sales Tax
The sales tax rate varies around the world, but here in the UK it's 17.5%. Urgh! What kind of figure is that?
Let's look at it again and see how we can tame the beast by breaking it down.
17.5
It consists of 10, plus 5 plus 2.5, doesn't it?
And those numbers form a distinct sequence. In other words... "10, plus half, plus half again".
Now that we know this, we can do something really clever...
Suppose you want to calculate 17.5% of 40 UK pounds. How would you work this out? (Stop! Don't even think of reaching for that calculator!)
Start with the 10. 10% of 40 is 4. Add half (2) and half again (1) and you get 7.
So you proudly announce to your colleagues... "So by adding 17.5% sales tax to our £40 product, the total retail price will be... £47."
They look on amazed.
Let's take another example and show how simple math really is...
* * * Example 2 - Help your daughter with her homework.
You arrive home and your daughter needs some help with her math assignment. It's those darn fractions again.
She just can't make sense of them.
"A half times a half is a quarter. So how, when you multiply things together, can you have LESS than you started out with!"
You explain that multiplication and division are two sides of the same thing, and you make it "real world" for her with a little analogy:
You get her to imagine a cake.
You remind her that "multiplying by half" is another way of saying divide by 2. So she pictures herself halving the cake, giving one piece half to her friend Jane, and keeping the other half.
You daughter now has half a cake.
She multiplies her piece by a half (i.e. "divides it into two again") and she's left with a quarter.
She goes off to bed happy, dreaming about birthday cake And you get to watch the ball game on TV.
Again, it's just a matter of simplifying.
------------------------------------------------------------
Real world math is not about mental agony, or learning mechanical formulas that you follow mindlessly like a robot.
It's about common sense, seeing how numbers really work, and breaking things down.
You just need a little imagination. After all, that's what genius really is.
About The Author
Murdo Macleod is a reformed calculator user and co-author of the 'Fun With Figures' mental math course. Come and see what parents, students, home schoolers, business people, and math phobics around the world are raving about: http://FunWithFigures.com/
|
?>
News on Self Improvement and Motivation
Workshop on personality development
Neha Foundation will be organising one-week workshop on ‘self-improvement' for students aged between 13 and 19 years from May 21 to 25 between 9.30 a.m. and 1.30 p.m. at No. 153, Bells Road, Chep... After-school activities form well-rounded kids
If you're carting around more than one child to several after-school activities in the hope of rearing learned, talented, self-assured adults, the message from researchers is clear - keep it up, you're on the right track. Toolbox: Prime Cycling Pyramid
As I discussed in my first post, Prime Cycling is defined as “riding at a consistently high level under the most challenging training and race conditions.†Looking back through the years, 5/17/12
Five years ago Pinal Hispanic hosts Eloy Block Party Science Fiction or Fact: Humanlike Intelligent Machines Will Soon Exist
In this weekly series, Life's Little Mysteries rates the plausibility of popular science fiction concepts.
|
