Basic Mathematics: An Introduction: Teach Yourself

Alan Graham

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781473651975
• eBook ISBN: 9781473651982
• Topic: Mathematics
• Subtopic: Mathematics General
• Index: Mathematics

Basic Mathematics teaches you all the maths you need for everyday situations. If you are terrified by maths, this is the book for you.Do you shy away from using numbers? Basic Mathematics can help. An easy-to-follow guide, it will ensure you gain the confidence you need to tackle maths and overcome your fears. It offers simple explanations of all the key areas, including decimals, percentages, measurements and graphs, and applies them to everyday situations, games and puzzles to help you understand mathematics quickly and enjoyably.Everything you need is here in this one book. Each chapter includes clear explanations, worked examples and test questions. At the end of the book there are challenges and games to give you new and interesting ways to practise your new skills.

1

Reasons to be cheerful about mathematics

In this chapter you will learn:

• why you can succeed at learning maths, even if you have failed in the past

• why a calculator will help

• how to develop a positive attitude to maths.

Is this book really for me?

I wonder what made you decide to buy this book! No doubt each individual has his or her own special reason. As author, I clearly can’t meet everyone’s exact needs, so I tried to write this book with two particular types of reader in mind. I will call them Marti and Mel.

MARTI

Marti was neither particularly good nor particularly bad at mathematics, but was able to get by. She could usually work out the sums set by her teacher at school, but never really understood why they worked. She had a vague sense that there was, potentially, an exciting mental world of mathematical ideas to be explored, but somehow it never happened for her. She now has two children aged ten and six. She is aware that her own attitudes to mathematics are being passed on all the time to her children, and she wants to be able to encourage and help them more effectively. The crunch for Marti came when her daughter asked her about the difference between odd and even numbers. Marti knew which numbers were odd and which were even, but she couldn’t really explain why. She might have bought this book to understand some of the basic ‘whys’ in mathematics.

MEL

Mel never got on with mathematics in school. He lost confidence with it at an early stage and constantly had the feeling of ‘if only the teacher and the other pupils knew how little I know, they’d be shocked’. As the years went on, he learned to cover up his problems, and as a result he always had a bad feeling whenever mathematics cropped up – a combination of fear of being caught out and guilt at not properly facing up to it. He has a good job, but his fear of mathematics regularly causes him problems. He might have bought this book in order to lay to rest the ghost of his mathematical failure once and for all.

While your name is unlikely to be Mel or Marti, maybe there is an aspect of their experiences of, and hopes for, mathematics learning that you can identify with?

SHOULD I START AT CHAPTER 1 AND READ RIGHT THROUGH THE BOOK?

The honest answer to this question is, ‘It all depends…’. If your mathematics is reasonably sound, you might like to skip Chapters 1 to 3, which deal with basic ideas of what a number is (hundreds, tens and units), how to add, subtract, multiply and divide and how to make a start with a simple four-function calculator. However, even if you do have a basic understanding of these things, you could always skim-read these chapters, if only to boost your confidence.

If, like Marti, you have an interest in helping someone else, say a child, then read these three chapters with a teacher’s hat on. They should provide you with some ideas about how you can help someone else to grasp these ideas of basic arithmetic.

Can I succeed now if I failed at school?

There are a number of reasons that school mathematics may have been dull and hard to grasp. Here are some resources that you may have now which weren’t available to you when you were aged 15.

RELEVANCE

There were undoubtedly many more important things going on in most people’s lives at the age of 8, 12 or 15 than learning about adding fractions or solving equations. Mathematics just doesn’t seem to be particularly important or relevant at school. But as you get older, you are better able to appreciate some of the practical applications of mathematics, and how various mathematical ideas relate to the world of home and work. Even a willingness to entertain abstract ideas for their curiosity value alone may seem more attractive out of a school context. One student commented:

Yes, I think you can associate more with it. When you get to our age, when you’ve a family and a home, I think you can associate more if you do put it to more practical things. You can see it better in your mind’s eye.

CONFIDENCE

As an adult learner, you can take a mature approach to your study of mathematics and be honest in admitting when you don’t understand. As one adult learner said, after an unexpectedly exciting and successful mathematics lesson conducted in a small informal setting:

I felt I could ask the sort of question that I wouldn’t have dared ask at school – like ‘What is a decimal?’

Spotlight

For many years I have been lucky enough to work for the Open University – sometimes referred to as the ‘second chance’ university. Many of our students, through no fault of their own, got off to a bad start learning maths at school and disliked the subject. How different it is now. Watching these students at summer school I see excitement, enthusiasm, confidence and – for the first time for many of them – the experience of success in a subject they thought they couldn’t do!

MOTIVATION

A third factor in your favour now is motivation. Children are required to attend school and to turn up to their mathematics lessons, whether they want to or not. In contrast, you have made a conscious choice to study this book, and the difference in motivation is crucial. Perhaps you have chosen to read the book because you need a better grasp of mathematics in order to be more effective at work. Or maybe you are a mathephobic parent who wants a better outlook for your own child. Or it is possible that you have always regretted that your mathematical understanding got lost somewhere, and it is simply time to lay that ghost to rest.

MATURITY AND EXPERIENCE

You are a very different person from when you were 8 or 15 years old. You now have a richer vocabulary and a wide experience of life, both of which will help you to grasp concepts you never understood before.

Hasn’t maths changed since I was at school?

Mathematics has changed a bit since you were at school, but not by as much as you think. The changes have occurred more in the language of mathematics than in the topics covered. Basic arithmetic is still central to primary mathematics, and today’...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title
• Contents 
• Meet the author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Reasons to be cheerful about mathematics
• 2 The magic number machine
• 3 Calculating with numbers
• 4 Fractions
• 5 Decimals
• 6 Percentages
• 7 Measuring
• 8 Statistical graphs
• 9 Using a formula
• 10 Puzzles, games and diversions
• 11 Spreadsheets
• 12 Diagnostic quiz
• Appendix A: Calculating a best buy
• Appendix B: Reading the 24-hour clock
• Appendix C: Bus and railway timetables
• Appendix D: Checking the supermarket bill
• Appendix E: Understanding a shop receipt
• Appendix F: Checking the VAT
• Appendix G: Cooking with figures
• Appendix H: Buying a TV set
• Appendix I: Will it fit?
• Appendix J: Measures of alcohol
• Appendix K: Understanding barcodes
• Appendix L: Junk mail and free offers
• Appendix M: Winning on the National Lottery
• Appendix N: Safe travel
• Taking it further
• Copyright