How numbers work

CHAPTER 1

This is how numbers work.

They do work, they always work, they never fail to work.

Numbers are reliable, always there for you when you need them and they always, always, do the same thing.

No matter how many times you do the same sum, no matter where you do it or what you do it for the answer will always be the same. It can never be anything else but the right answer to that sum.

The change from a Twenty Pound Note for a £17.25 amount owed is £2.75. It always will be. It never changes. That is the correct change and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is wrong and you need to ask yourself why they say it could be otherwise when this book says it as it is and this book is telling you it is always the same answer to the same sum.

Numbers are like that. They tell it like it is and never fail to do so.

 

Numbers start at the beginning and keep on going, forever they will keep on going until you want your numbers to stop. Numbers that do not belong to anyone just never stop. Honest!

Numbers have names so you know which is which, just like with brothers and sisters and things.

Because remembering too many names gets confusing it is customary to keep on using the same few over and again and just modify them to mean other ways of using them.

They start out with number one, just like counting your fingers.

Most people have ten fingers.

Count yours to check. One 1, two 2, three 3, four 4, five 5, six 6, seven 7, eight 8, nine 9, ten 10.

You knew that already, I could tell.

But that is most of what you need to know, one two three four five six seven eight nine ten.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Now look at the tape measure, and stick a wall chart on the wall with the number one at the bottom.

Low down near the floor because one is a very low number and ten is higher, it is always higher.

Numbers know their place.

You only have to respect that to be able to use them and own them. Numbers are a way of coping with the world around you. They are only a tool, they are not frightening at all – never believe anyone who says maths is difficult. Maths is actually easier than walking up and down stairs.

Each number is called a digit, just like each finger and thumb can be called a digit.

The first few numbers have one digit names, but then they double up. Like standing side by side in order, a queuing system for numbers as if waiting for service at the checkout. No queue jumping allowed, numbers know their place.

There is another number, a special secret number that means nothing.

0

It stands for nothing on its own. But it is not a nothing number when it gets together in its right place. That is the number zero. 0

When you have zero and nothing else you know you have nothing at all.

But when you have zero with a number standing in front of it you have shed-loads.

It can be ten, or 20 or with two zeros it is in the hundreds.

Chapter 2

ADDITION AND SUBTRACTION

HNW Chapter 3

You would think it is impossible to take away from a number an amount that is greater than that number and you are right. If you only have 3 pennies and the thing you want costs 4 pennies you cannot buy it - unless someone lends you the other penny right there and then. If they lend you their penny they do not have it to spend on something they want for themselves. They will have to forgo buying what they want so that you can buy what you want.

Would they do that for you, for nothing in return? If they do they are very good friends and you must make sure you pay them back as soon as you possibly can so as to be able to keep being able to have that friendship.

You cannot give away what you haven’t got. You cannot pay with money you haven’t got. You can only give something that exists, so if you want to give something you haven’t got you might try and borrow either the thing or the money to get the thing and pay back the debt, that is the amount owing, at the earliest convenient opportunity according to the terms on which that thing or that money was loaned.

Percentages.

“Per cent” means of a hundred, remember that in America there are one hundred Cents to the Dollar? It means hundredths. So 10% might look frightful but is simply ten parts of a hundred, ten of a hundred. It shows you a proportion so that you can equate one amount with another more easily. Imagine someone wants streaks put in their hair so that the overall appearance changes the colour to being lighter. If you put in blonde streaks that make up a small percentage of the total amount of hair the overall look would not be of a blonde headed person but of a dark haired person with blonde highlights. If you want to put in a great many streaks so that the overall look is of a blonde haired person you would figure out how much to do in proportion to the whole – and that is what percentages are for. To equate numbers with actual facts.

To figure out, or calculate, ten per cent of a hundred, is dead easy and anyone who tells you otherwise is a rat. 

Ten percent of a hundred is ten. 10% of a 100 is 10. Notice anything funky about the way it is written in numbers and maths jargon? It uses the same numbers with the end one missing. You just chop off the end, or move the decimal point. If you want 10% of £200.00 again you just move the dot and get £20.00. 10% of 300 beans is 30 in the same way.

Ten per cent of eight hundred and thirty is eighty three. 10% of 830 is 83.

Ten per cent of two hundred and sixty eight is twenty six point eight. 10% of 268 is 26.8.

Ten per cent of three hundred and forty five is thirty four point five. 10% of 345 is 34.5.

You just move the decimal point.

“Decimal” is a word that comes from the Latin, like Cent did, and means to do with the number hundred. Latin was the language of the Roman Empire. Romans were not much good at maths because they hadn’t figured out how to write them down and play with them as we have. With no marks to use as numbers they used letters, teaching their children which letter meant how much. C was the way they said 100. D was 500 and L was 50. M stands for a thousand (1000). It makes little sense and is so hard to use that these days the whole system is only used by the BBC and quiz question creators. But the principle of basing things around an easy number of 10 (ten),100 (hundred), 1000 (thousand), 10,000 (ten thousand), 100,000 (hundred thousand), 1,000,000 (million) sticks with us because it is useful. And easy to understand because we normally have ten fingers to count on. Any ten fingers tend to be valued differently in real life. The forefinger that you use most. The big middle finger that isn’t even in the middle. Horses use their own equivalent of that big middle finger to run on, their hoof is the equivalent of a finger nail on a long middle finger and a long middle toe. You have the ring finger and the little finger and a thumb. But when thinking of them as numbers it helps to think of them as all the same and of equal value. No special talents in numbers, like beans, all the same. If you start counting at the little finger the number four comes up as your favourite finger, but if you start at the thumb the number four is the ring finger – very different fingers but the value and position makes no difference if they are being used only for pretending to be numbers. 

One way to make sense of percentages in your mind, and probably the reason why we tend to use them, is that you can see your own ten fingers and relate to that number. Imagine ten pairs of hands, that is 100. To imagine what 10% means think of it as one finger out of the ten you have. And notice the others. 90% is what the others amount to. Almost all but not quite. 50% is one whole hand but not the other, it is two equal shares and is the same as saying half. If value added tax on goods and services is 17.5% you can see how much of your hand that is really – almost two whole fingers! 

The Romans used the number 100 to run things on, sending out soldiers in batches of 100. If they got cross with a group of soldiers they could decimate them – this meant killing 10 per cent of them, one in ten taken out to leave the other 90 feeling inclined to behave themselves better (or run away).

Taking 10% from a batch of any number is pretty easy. Ten per cent of 2500 is 250, and taken away (or killed) leaves 2250 still standing. 

Patterns in numbers. Pretty.

So here is the practice part. Say you want to find out what 4 out of 12 is as a percentage you do, 4 x 100 and divide that by 12.

Drop the racism

The EU needs to drop the racism of they want to stay with Britain.

It is becoming clear that people who come here from central and Eastern Europe harbour an intrinsic racism they find it hard to drop while living among us in the UK.

It has always been the British way to pick up on what is the best in the world and adopt it, use it, enjoy it. Cuban and Afro beats in music are commonplace and well liked but those coming here from the mainland Europe seem to have an aversion to it. Indian, Chinese, West Indian and American food and drinks are preferred here – they know how to deal with our temperamental climate and how to live with it.

We are an outward looking group of very large islands off the coast of the continent of Europe. Britain is a trading nation and we trade with anyone who will trade fair, regardless of race, colour or creed. We enjoy and embrace our cultural mix, take the best and run with it together, our NHS and armed forces use staff recruited and trained in the way we together found to be best. Blocking most of all this out for some inherent prejudice is as stupid as denying oneself the friendship of 90% of the planet just because they do not have the white gene.
            Europeans have got to drop this stupid pathetic racism or lose us as friends and EU payees. Embrace the world or loose out.

Sue Doughty

18^th July 2013

The NHS is wonderful.

The NHS is wonderful. As a patient I dare not say otherwise. Most of it is fantastic but there are small isolated pockets that are not as good as they might be, that is to say, potentially or intentionally lethal. Such an area has a queen bee whose confidence in her own competence is so low that she bullies and shouts and mocks like the central character of Abigail’s Party.

Such a pocket of terror is the recovery suite of my local hospital. I have to say it is not their fault. It is the job of nursing staff there to stabilise the patients wheeled into them after an operation before sending them on to the ward where the patient’s notes await attention. I was told that the notes are not accessible by the nursing staff in Recovery, nor are the medications the patient brought in with them.  The doctor tells the nurse in charge of their patient of the situation and what is expected of them.

Maybe those nurses are overworked or have poor memories, or they are just in the jurisdiction of a bully. Some patients might not come through the operation alive and nurses must face up to seeing that.

So I was wheeled in there unconscious after a surgical procedure under anaesthetic and awoken by the surgeon. I heard him speak to the nurse, heard him tell her that I have MS and needed to be given the routine MS medication I had brought with me as soon as I was well enough to swallow. I did the physiotherapy as instructed, asked for the tablets and was denied them.

Next time I regained consciousness I told the nurse my left leg hurt more than the shoulder that had been operated on, told her I have MS and needed the tablets, asking that she fetch them for me. My voice was still quiet and groggy. She turned away, calling to the other staff about the silly things people say when they come out of anaesthetic, “This one thinks she has MS!” Then turning to me she added, “let’s have the doctor decide that, shall we?” and walked away. My mind could not quite capture the name of the consultant neurologist who had prescribed for me. Why would anyone hallucinate about having MS? Oh, how I wish it was a passing delusion! But it is not and it does deliver seizures if the right tablets are not taken on time, and after an operation that is enough, apparently, to knock me unconscious. The bullying nurse told me I was to be kept in overnight because I was not stabilised, to which I replied that I could not do that, I was a day patient and had left the rest of my MS medications at home. She laughed loudly, mocking me as a delusional idiot. 

After 5 hours of this a different nurse, small, smart and caring, asked courteously if there was anything she could get for me. “Yes,” I said, quietly and coherently. “200 milligrams of gabapentin, 20 milligrams of omeprazole, 30 to 40 minutes for the side effects to pass, my clothes, my sister, my handbag, my mobile phone and my discharge papers please.” She ran off and got my tablets, delivered with a glass of water. After 30 minutes nobody came to discharge me so I set about disconnecting all the sensors they had stuck on my body. This set up an alarm that summoned attention, another bucket of ridicule, and my bed was wheeled through corridors with the bullying nurse still shouting about me like a corgi biting my ankles.
 

In the ward I saw my sister, my clothes and the chance to leave so I ripped off the gown and put on the clothes with complete disregard to privacy and decorum. A nurse pushed a trolley with a plate and cover to me saying that was my dinner. “No, my dinner is awaiting me at home, I now need my discharge papers please?”

After a lot more fuss and protests from staff I escaped the hospital and my sister drove me home, flustered at hearing a different story from me than she had been told over the phone. The Recovery Ward told her I was very ill and wanted to keep me in. I was telling her I know I’m too ill to be here and need to go home.

 

Maybe a patient can imagine she might have MS but I doubt such a delusion could generate all the symptoms of Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis that have not been quelled by medication as required.

The operation was a success; the consultant neurologist’s prescription decisions are excellent and accurate, my GP’s are brilliant and supportive, and the eye hospital I use is amazing, the best in the world. But that one bad nurse ruined my regard of that prestigious hospital and she will resist all disciplinary proceedings as bullies always do. If the surgeon had written MS on my other arm maybe the nursing staff would have been more believing of my words but while the system dictates that Recovery Suite staff must not have access to patient notes mistakes like this will continue to be made.

Imagine what it would be like for a patient who does not have a sister to be there for her!

Thanks, Sis! You probably saved me from becoming a statistic.

Sue Doughty

17/7/13

Its just good sense

For sure Annie Milton is the best MP Guildford ever had. Guildford is well served and should keep her in place for as long as she is willing to serve.

Sue Doughty