Are you numerate? These are some questions designed to test everyday math skills - 20% of people got 4 or 5 right

[cakeorwine]

This came up in another thread. I am a bit sceptical about the quality of this test to assess numeracy and everyday maths skills from these 5 questions and to use this to say how good people are at maths, but there you go.

www.nationalnumeracy.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/Our_year_in_numbers/national_numeracy_day_2019.pdf

The questions (you can use a calculator)

1. If a scarf costs £11.70 after a 10% reduction, what was the original price? (L1)
   • £12.50
   • £13.25
   • £13.99
   • £13.00
   • I don’t know

2. Mike’s lunch contains 640 calories of energy. What percentage is this of his target daily intake of 2000 calories? (L1)
   • 45%
   • 62%
   • 65%
   • 32%
   • I don’t know

3. Rail tickets increased by 2% in year 1, and 5% in year 2. What was the overall increase over the two years? (L2)
   • 7%
   • 7.1%
   • 10.0%
   • 10.7%
   • I don’t know

4. . These are three offers on the same ketchup. Which is the best value for money? (L2)
   • 275g for £1.05
   • 454g for £1.99
   • 650g for £2.20
   • 425g: buy two for £3.10
   • I don’t know

5. You buy a laptop that costs £899, including VAT at 20%. How much of the purchase price is VAT? (L2)
   • £179.80
   • £89.80
   • £125.00
   • None of these
   • I don’t know

Based on the results from a five-question multiple-choice test of people’s everyday maths skills, 56% of the population scored less than 3. The questions are everyday maths questions from the National Numeracy Challenge and are all roughly equivalent to those within a GCSE maths paper.

Based on results from a multiple-choice test of people’s everyday maths skills, 20% of the population scored 4 or 5, roughly equivalent to a GCSE pass (Grade 4 / C). This is in line with the last Government-commissioned Skills for Life survey.

So have a go and see where you fit in. Answers are at the bottom of the link

@JCoverdale

with a class size of 12 it’s no wonder you were able to move ahead. 70s Britain was 30 or more in a primary school class

I got 5 correct.
Not a strain for me but I have always enjoyed maths

I only got the first 2 questions correct. Would love to understand how to work out questions 3-5..

I’m currently studying to retake GCSE Maths and really struggling:( I managed to scrape a grade C first time around but that in the 1990s and GCSE’s are a lot harder now.

It’s really depressing when I see questions like this and despite all my current studies again I still just don’t get it.

4/5
I knew the VAT options weren't right, but somehow overlooked 'none of these' - so I failed reading comprehension too!

0/5. I answered "don't know" for each one because I don't care, and the questions are too hard and they didn't have calculators when I was at school so I wouldn't know how to do the calculation.

Got 5 without a calculator though did struggle a bit to do the price comparison in my head. Have a long ago O level, but would say I'm fairly numerate.

To work out Q4 - you can work out the price per gram.

So you divide the price by how many grams you have.

Or you can work out the grams per £. So you divide the weight by the price

To work out the VAT, the price is 120% of the ex-VAT price.

So to work backwards, you divide it by 120 and multiply by 100.

I got 4 out of 5. I don’t get the % one 😂

To do the VAT one in my head I took 10% (which is easy to work out by moving the decimal) and doubled it.

I got to 3 and think I've got them all right but didn't even have the brain space to try the last 2! So I don't know what that says about me 😂

5/5 no calculator. GCE ‘O’ Level in 1971

I am not numerate. Could not do any of them and wouldn't even know how to use a calculator to work them out.

No matter - I have a 2:1 degree from a London University in a difficult subject and numerous good jobs and been able to care for my family and live a purposeful life without knowing the answers to those questions, so am happy.

4/5 for me. B in Maths O level, Science A levels and first degree, but Maths was always my weakest one out of the technical subjects. I understand it better now tbh after helping kids with homework up to GCSE. In my defense I messed up 4 by dividing it the wrong way to get g/pence instead of pence/gram be sure DH came in and put the football on at full blast.

I only got the last 2 right. I really struggle with maths, have been trying to do some khan academy the last year to understand the basics.

I got 5/5.

My 13 year old got 5/5

My 11 year old only got 1, but had the right idea for 3 others, couldn't quite get to the end of them. Couldn't attempt the VAT question.

Very selective set of questions!

@SmartWatch doesn't matter if you work out g/£ or £/g - you just need to know if you want the most grams per pound, or the least pounds per gram - that's where my youngest slipped up.

5/5

Of course the question doesn't take into account things like:

• whether a big bottle will get used up before it goes off
• whether a smaller bottle means a higher percentage of the sauce is wasted through sticking to the sides
• whether a big bottle will encourage over-use of ketchup, either through a psychological sense of plenty, or through faster dispensing
• whether a big bottle is more unwieldy and therefore likely to get dropped on the floor and entirely wasted
• whether your fridge is small enough that it's worth buying the two for £3.10 bottles, so half the ketchup can stay in the cupboard, leaving fridge space clear to stop something else going off and wasting money
• the relative value of money spent now vs. money spent later (this question might feel different in a deflationary or hyper-inflationary context)
• whether you reuse bottles of particular sizes for things
• whether these are plastic squeezy bottles, glass bottles, or something else, and whether these differences incur monetary or other costs
• whether you have a family member with strong ketchup preferences meaning a non-preferred brand won't get used and will eventually end up in the bin one way or another

It's nice that they try to show how maths can be relatable and useful in real life, but with most decisions there's a lot more factors than the simplified questions can include.

@FurryDandelionSeekingMissile

You've put a lot of effort into that.

I wonder how many value for money questions get answered that way

@Eastie77Returns

only got the first 2 questions correct. Would love to understand how to work out questions 3-5.

Q3:

Year 0 - price £100
increase by 2% - increase is 2 - new total is £ 102
Year 1 price £102
increase that by 5% - increase is 5.1 new total is £107.1
Compared to year 0, difference is 7.1
You don't really need to do the arithmetic for that one, as the rise has to be more that 7% (that's the non-compounded answer) but not by much, and there's only one plausible answer

Q4: you don't really need to do the adding up for this.

Look down the sizes and figures.
It jumps out that 3 is much better value that 2 (which is similar value to 1). So exclude first two.
Option 4 is 850g for 3:10 v option 3 which is 650 for 2.20 . You could either do the full price per gram calculation at this point.
Or as I did by estimation/comparison. There's a 200g difference between the two weights. That means that 4 is nearly 1/3 more ketchup than 3. But the price difference is 90p, which nearly half as much again. Hemce wose VFM

Q5:

The price is £899 inc vat at 20%. So that means the £899 is made up of the net price (ie 100% of the cost without tax), plus 20% of the net price added on. So that means that the gross price is 120%
So that means there are 6x 20% groups in the total price (5x 20% for the basic price plus another 20% sales tax).
Divide you can divide the gross price by 6 to get one lot of 20% (ie the amount of the VAT) and you get £14..... you don't need to finish that sum because it's already d) none of the above.
If you do the full sum it's £148.83

I got them all right - but only because I have project managed my own house build (which was a fucking nightmare).

I wouldn't expect most people to have got them right as percentages - other than sales % off, are not really part of everyday life for the average person.

Being able to do %s at school when you have recently been learning about them and compound %s etc.

I do remember working as a rep, back in the 80s and having a real problem getting through to some people that if you took 10% off a sum and then added 10% to the new figure, you would not go back to the original amount.

I was really quite bored

It's just… I get that being able to do these kinds of calculations is useful and important, I just think it's often more complicated than that. It's great if you're fast at calculating how many pence per hundred grams something is, but there's also a lot of value in being able to think about the broader practical context.

5/5 no calc but I work this kind of thing out in shops all the time, you’d be surprised what it saves.

5/5, primary teacher.

I used a calculator to check #4 between the last 2 options.

All right, though had to use a calculator for 5 though could probably do it without if I had bothered to get a pen and paper. I got a B in GCE! Shows how ancient I am!