To be slightly horrified at how poor my basic skills are?

[primrosesandmaths]

In my professional, graduate profession, I have just been told I have to work out something as a percentage.

I have no idea how to do it.

I shall google - it isn’t an advice thread as such, but my maths is just dire and I can’t help wondering if this is common or whether I am an imposter in my role.

I think the problem it is that something you may have been able to do at school years ago to pass a GCSE but if you don't use the skills regulalry then you lose them and forget how to do things.

Feel free to point out my mistakes, TIRF.

I agree.. use it or lose it....

I'm baffled when my kids ask for hep with Higher Maths.. its literally a different language

Yes, although retention of information when I was at school was an issue. Teachers used to get quite irate with me for it!

The only way I can work out a percentage is to start with the value, divide by 100, (move the decimal point 2 to the left) i.e. 100.00 becomes 1.00 and times that by the percentage required, I'm sure that's a pretty crude (and probably long) way of doing it, but it works for me,

Long division, did it at school, but not a clue now!!!!!

I used to work in retail, the number of people who asked me how much 10% off £10 would be was shocking. What about the number who think that if you get a 10% pay cut, and later you get a 10% pay increase you'll be back to where you started?

QuimReaper A median is useful when you have an asymmetrical distribution, like for incomes where most people don't earn very much but a few people earn huge amounts. (Or a distribution when the extreme values are a long way from the centre and subject to variation) The mean is affected by extreme values, so if the top 5% increase their income, then that will increase the mean income, even though the vast majority haven't seen their incomes change.

Again, when the distribution is highly asymmetrical, the median is a better measure of "typical". Median income is currently around £27,000 - Mean is considerably higher because of the huge incomes of those at the very top of the scale, but 90% of us have incomes less than £50k - so using a mean to characterise average incomes gives a figure that would give the majority of us as having incomes below the average.

"The majority of people have more than the average number of legs" (if you measure the average by the mean)

Gemini :

My kids refuse to put effort into learning MFL so I tell myself Maths is their second language!

It took me 2 goes to pass O level maths - I'm not proud or complacent about that.
Can never remember exactly how to work out a %age, but when I've wanted to (e.g. to see by what %age a house price has dropped!) I fiddle it out by using an obvious example, e.g. What %age of £300k is £75k?

It's a quarter, I.e. 25%, so I then fiddle out what over what x 100 = that. I do remember that it's A over B , or B over A x 100 but can never remember which.

And having just typed that, and having a scrap of paper handy, I've realised that it's 75 over 300 x 100, which = 25.
I would have to use a calculator for anything more complicated!

I’m pretty sure your English is far superior to most people’s Chardonnay

When I try to talk to people in my so-called second language they smile kindly and start speaking English to me! Perhaps I am just not very bright!

When I try to talk to people in my so-called second language they smile kindly and start speaking English to me

Likewise - I've even had French people, in France, begging me to speak English.

It’s hard work, Primrose, but don’t let cheap shots about my literacy get to me.

I think sometimes people don't understand the concept, so then can't remember how to do the calculation as they have learned it as a 'trick' rather than thorough understanding.

So 27% of 4567:
% means out of 100.
'of' in maths means multiply
(27/100) x 4567 =

I agree though that anything you don't use you will forget over time. I'm slightly surprised however that % aren't used frequently enough for people to remember them, what with sales in shops, rates of inflation, interest rates etc.
I would think people would be more likely to forget angles of a triangle, or algebra, or Venn diagrams.

(And yes I can still do long division)

I empathise. My brain refuses to retain the information required to carry out such ‘basic’ mathematical tasks. It’s just not geared that way. My husband, on the other hand, is mathematically geared — rarely needs a calculator unless he’s feeling particularly lazy. But whilst his grammar is mostly ok, he still mixes up their/there/it’s/its — basic English I instinctly grasp and understand.

I was never inspired to learn or see beauty in maths. So I don’t/can’t. I just can’t get my head around it. And for as long as google exists, I doubt I’ll slice off time to practice.

Thank you for explaining that Mere

"The majority of people have more than the average number of legs" (if you measure the average by the mean)

How on earth d'you work that out though?! Who's wandering around out there on thirty legs upping the average of the population?!

Your literacy is just fine chardonnay, at least I think it is.

I don’t think i ever mastered long division.

I wondered the same quim

I’m quite shocked when people don’t know how to work out percentages..how else do you work out how much you’ll pay/get off for something in a sale?! It’s one of the things taught at school that really do need to be used in real life regularly.

Ironically I think most people know what "mean" is, and thats the hardest one to do!

Mode sounds like Most and thats what it is, the number you have the most of.
Median sounds like Medium, its the medium option because its the one right in the middle of the range once youve arranged them all in order.
Mean is "add them all up and divide by the number of items you had" and its "the one thats left over" for me

DH & I have both found maths relatively easy in our youth, both studied it at A level, and DH did a double honours degree..one of which was maths. Our eldest daughter has always really struggled with it, and anything she learned throughout her schooling, was purely to memorise facts & methods for the purpose of an exam. So she had a high level 5 on her SATs, good grades throughout school, and a B in her GCSE...but she is simply unable to think or logic numerically. Her verbal based reasoning abilities are very high, but numerically, she is challenged. Our youngest however, is gifted with maths, and her ability to reason numerically is very much innate. Teaching methodologies aside, some people are just not intellectually wired for maths! But that doesn't mean to say you can't improve on what you have.

It's the people with less than 2 legs bringing the mean down, nobody needs to have 30 legs!

I am currently revising for a compulsory numeracy test in order to do my teacher training in september.
I was shit about 2 months ago, but now I have grasped it and reckon I'm not bad at general mental arithmetic such as percentages, fractions and multiplication.

But it's only because I'm actively using it every day to revise. Once the test is done on Friday and if I pass I will never look at those books again. Then give it a good few months and I will have totally forgotten the whole lot!

Chardonnay People are not taught simple sums

Assuming we are talking about UK schools here, when did they stop teaching simple sums and tables? I was taught them, my children were taught them, whenever I've been into schools in between times children are being taught these skills.

Core arithmetic and tables have been on the national curriculum since it started.

So which time period are we talking about here? Or are we just popping in for a bit of bashing?

I'm OK with basic percentages, it's calculating percentage change and the % difference between two numbers that gets me every time. I have tried and tried. I have got my former maths teacher mother to explain it to me. It even comes up fairly regularly in my job (by which I mean several times a year, as opposed to weekly or daily), and I can never, ever remember. My brain just won't absorb it. Google to the rescue every single time!

I also have absolutely no recollection of being taught BODMAS.

Primrose I think know what you mean as I have a DH and DS who are perhaps similar. They need mass "input" by stealth, so living in a country rather than getting frustrated trying to learn a language in a couple of hours a week when they keep forgetting short term. Loads of extra practice required and that can be frustrating. So then you ask yourself is it worth it.

Spaced repetition is a bit of a buzzword but essentially the idea is to learn something (your mode, mean and median for example) once. Then repeat the next day, then in 2 days time then 4 then a week then a fortnight etc..

Well. I took so long typing my last response that by the time I posted everyone else had explained use of median much better than me!

I understand mean and median but not mode. Or mode. Or anything. Take your last till receipt from a reasonably big supermarket shop.
Total bill divided by number of items is mean cost per item.
Now re-write the bill in order of the cost of each item. Median is the price where half your items cost less than that price and half cost more.
Now look at all the prices where several items had the same price. Mode is the one where most items had that price.

Emilia (in all its manifestations) is the mode for babies' names this year.

Mode isn't as useful as the other two. Mean is useful because the mathematics around it works out easily - it's easier to see if there's likely to be a real (as opposed to chance) difference between two populations when you look at their means rather than their medians, for example.