Go Figure! The Numbers You Need for Everyday Life

By Nigel J. Hopkins

A practical guide to the mathematics of everyday life includes formulas, tables, statistics, definitions, and examples for calculating interest rates, mortgage payments, investments, sports scoring, weather, calories, gambling odds, and much more.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810394243
• ISBN13: 9780810394247
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Visible Ink Press
• Length: 349 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.3" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Don’t leave home without it.

I can’t believe they made me go through years of school, and all I ever needed was this book. Yep, it has “The numbers you need for everyday life”. Well organized, yet getting a little long in the tooth. This book covers something practical for just about everybody. There are no glossy pictures; in fact, there are no pictures. However, there are plenty of diagrams and understandable explanations. There are nine divisions of about 90 numbers of subjects. Many will never show up in your math books. A short sample is: Understanding the Consumer Price Index Cardiovascular fitness Biorhythms: real and imaginary Pressure and weather patterns Gambling, games, odds, and probability Sports – scoring and Statistics (including bowling) Reading your gas meter PH level in the soil Camera shutter speeds Astronomical numbers Mass to energy Calendars Radioactive decay I could keep going on and on, but you need to see for yourself how much fun it can be.

The explanation of the majority (my guess is at least 80%) of the numbers people encounter in daily

The daily life of the modern person involves being constantly bombarded by numbers derived from the extraction of raw data and the processing of it by mathematical formulas. If you are a sports fan, you are exposed to terms such as earned run average, points per game, batting average and on-base percentage. To understand the strategies behind investing your money, topics such as interest rates, return on investment and the rules behind individual retirement accounts are important to you. Finally, if you buy a home or use a credit card, interest rates and payments are of fundamental importance in your life. All of these topics and more are covered in this book. The chapter titles are: *) Consuming passion - the basics of the computations consumers need to know. *) Your money or your life - financial information such as earned interest on bonds, monthly mortgages and individual retirement accounts. *) Bank on it - formulas for interest computation on the standard bank accounts *) Health and fitness by the numbers - topics such as life expectancy, fitness programs, ideal body weight and the spread of disease *) Weather and the environment - topics such as wind-chill factors, pollution and global warming *) Gambling, odds and games - Odds and Probabilities - formulas for the computation of the probabilities of winning basic games of chance *) Sports - scoring and statistics - the formulas used to compute the measurement statistics used to describe the most popular professional sports *) Home, hobbies and workshop numbers - the basic formulas for topics such as heating a home, using electrical energy and doing work around the house *) Popular science calculations - the formulas for areas such as satellite rotation, distances to the stars, time and calendars. The exposition is clear and understandable; formulas are few as the authors rely on charts and graphs as much as possible. While not every data point one encounters in daily life is covered here, the overwhelming majority are, which makes this an excellent reference for the non-mathematical consumer.