Part of Maths (Levels 1 and 2)Problem-solving tools
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Speaker: I'm just getting ready to go out for dinner with a few friends from work.
I work at a clothes shop in town, which is great, because I get my staff discount.
Maths was never my favourite subject and until last year I used to avoid it, which was making things difficult at work and home.
But I did start this new course in town and then it's given me a much better understanding of how to go about solving a maths problem.
Like tonight, for example, I know that we'll probably have to work out splitting the bill and tips.
Say we decide to leave a tip of 10%.
How do I go about calculating 10% of the total bill?
Usually I would just leave it for someone else to sort out, but actually I know that to find 10% of any amount you just divide by 10.
And we've just been learning new ways of working that out at college.
Tonight I might actually have a go myself at working it out!
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Speaker 1: Right, guys, so how do you want to go about sorting this?
Speaker 2: Should we just split it, and add 10% for a tip?
Speaker 1: (TO AUDIENCE) Cool, so now I can use what I learned in college to figure out the percentage.
First I need to figure out what 10% is so I can add it on before we split it.
Well, I know that any percentage can be written as a fraction of 100.
So 100% is the same as 100/100 and 10% is 10/100.
If I divide the top and bottom by 10 I get 1/10, so 10% equals one tenth.
And because it's a tenth, I know I should divide by 10.
(TO OTHER PEOPLE) If you could just bear with me, I just want to try this new trick that I learned at college.
(TO AUDIENCE) If I write this out like this it makes it dead easy for me.
And to divide by 10, I just need to move everything over one column to the right.
(TO OTHER PEOPLE) OK, so the tip is 拢11.18.
(TO AUDIENCE) Now add that to 拢111.80 to get the overall total.
Speaker: (TO OTHER PEOPLE) So if we add the 拢11.18 then that comes to 拢122.98 - is everyone happy with that?
So 拢122.98 divided by seven is 拢17.57, so I suppose it would be easier if we all just rounded it up to 拢18 each then?
(TO AUDIENCE) I'll just double check that's right. 18 脳 7 is 拢126.
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