Your Daily Quiz Math
Tutor
OK, so you haven’t done any math since high school, and you weren’t really
paying attention back then. Don’t
worry. It’s like riding a bicycle, and you need to work on this. YOU DO NEED TO KNOW MATH TO PASS YOUR STATE
EXAM! If you work on it, you may not
get all of the math questions right, but you might get a couple more right, and
a couple of questions can make a difference in whether you pass or fail. Determine your level below and work your way
from there to the end, or you can work on specific math topics as they become
available. Also, use of a BASIC
calculator is allowed and even encouraged at all times. Real estate, financial or scientific
calculators are not allowed on most state exams. The Math Tutor is getting better all the time. If you’re not quite happy with it, keep
checking back every week to see if it’s improved.
I couldn’t ride a bicycle in high school and I can’t ride one now
If you can answer all of the following questions correctly, you can move on to Second Grade.
1. What is the square root of π? (Just kidding) What would be the equivalent of 1.15 in a percentage?
2. What would 88% be in decimals?
3. What is one-quarter plus one-quarter?
4. .07 x 1000 = ?
5. What is the formula to find the area of a triangle?
6. $10,000 x 7% = ?
7. If Gladys puts three Pips on a midnight train, and one gets off every 80 minutes, how many will be on the train if it arrives in Georgia at 2:30AM?
8. Round off 8.5337 to 2 decimal places.
9. One-quarter plus .17 plus 83% is equal to what (in decimals)?
10. 7 times 2 plus 4 divided by 2 minus 4 is equal to what? Click here for answers
LESSON 1 Next
Where to start? You really don’t remember anything, huh? Well, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt with adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, at least with a calculator. One of the first things you should do is get to know your calculator. Not all calculators are identical. I will try to give you the most common order the functions should be entered, but make sure that’s how your calculator works.
Let’s start with a couple of tests on the calculator to make sure. Do these functions in the EXACT order given here.
7 x 10 =
You should have 70 on your calculator. Leave that in there and hit the divided by button and then 5. Now, you should have 14. Next hit clear at least twice, and then:
50 x 70 %
DO NOT HIT THE EQUALS BUTTON! That will calculate the percentage AGAIN, and throw your answer way off!
You should have 35 on your calculator. If you don’t, your calculator may function differently than most (or you may function differently than most). If so, you should determine how to come up with these answers.
OK. We’ll do more with that as we go along. The next thing we should learn is how to convert a decimal to a percentage and vice-versa. All you are doing here is moving the decimal point. To convert from a percentage to decimals, move the decimal point 2 places to the left, for example, 75% would become .75. If there are not two places, you have to put in a zero, so 7% becomes .07. To convert from decimals to a percentage, move the decimal point two places to the right. .75 becomes 75%. If there are not two places, you have to put in a zero. .7 becomes 70%. Now let’s try a few. Convert the following to decimals: 14% 4% 35½% 7½%
Convert the following to percentages: .05 .07 .075 .55 .7225
14% = .14 4% = .04 35½% = 35.5% = .355 7½% = 7.5% = .075
.05 = 5% .07 = 7% .075 = 7.5% .55 = 55% .7225 = 72.25%
Next we’ll convert fractions to decimals. For the most common fractions, the easiest thing to do is to just memorize the decimal equivalents: ½ = .5 ¼ = .25 ¾ = .75 ⅓ = .33 ⅔ = .67
You can also add one or more zeroes at the end of anything to the right of the decimal point and not change the number, so ½ and .5 and .50 and .500 are all the same thing.
⅓ is actually .333333, and the 3’s go on forever. This can be rounded off at any point. If you wanted to round it off to 2 decimal places, you would go to the third decimal place to determine what to do. If the third decimal place is less than five, you would round down, meaning the second place would stay the same (0.333 would become 0.33).
⅔ is actually .666666, going on forever. This would be rounded up, because each digit is more than five. If you wanted to round it to 2 decimal places, 0.666 would become 0.67. If you were rounding a number out to 2 decimal places and the third place was a 5, it might be rounded either way, depending on who wrote the question. In most cases it will be rounded up. It’s not likely that you would have to choose between .33 and .34.
You can determine the decimal equivalent of any fraction on your calculator. The number up top always goes into your calculator first. If there is a formula up top, figure out the entire formula first. The line in between the top and bottom ALWAYS means “divided by.” Then enter the bottom number into your calculator, and then hit the equal sign. Therefore:
1
8 would be the same as 1 divided by 8 or 0.125.
Now let’s move on to Lesson 2. By the way, the square root of π is somewhere around 1.7725 (not exact, but very close).
Introductory Questions: 1. 115% 2. .88 3. One-half 4. 70
5. Base times height divided by two, OR length times width divided by two (same thing)
6. $700 7. 2 (It was late when I was doing this, OK?!) 8. 8.53 9. 1.25
10. 5 Still not sure? Take the One Plus One Final Exam.
Back to Introductory Questions Start the lesson
©2000 Douglas R. Barry