7.0% actually 3.69%?

Nebulous2

Malthusian said:

flaneurs_lobster said:

It's quite telling that in a group of casual acquaintances it seems acceptable to admit being "no good a maths" while a similar admittance of poor reading skills would be shameful. 

I don't think that's totally true. In the majority of social groups there is no longer a stigma about saying "I have dyslexia". In most blue collar settings you would be considered eccentric at best if you started reading a book. 
Reading does however seem to be viewed with less suspicion than maths. Possibly because you can have reading material targeted at people with poor reading skills (gossip magazines, political pamphlets, misery lit) but not calculators that tell you that 2 + 2 = 5.

RG2015 said:

Curiously her response was almost apologetic when she said, "Sorry, but I have checked twice and you have the correct change".

Makes you proud to be British.
There is a social taboo about telling someone they are wrong when they are wrong, especially if they are in a position of superiority (as a customer generally is to a shopgirl or even a shopkeeper).
This may have something to do with why people who are good at maths are viewed with suspicion. "Eppur è un twenty."

  It may depend how you define blue collar, but in my experience there have always been a number of working class people who were avid readers. I come from a fishing community, where a lot of people were religious, and many fishermen went to sea with a bible and read it regularly. Others who weren't religious often had books with them as well.  

Then having spent a working life in care it wasn't unusual to have colleagues who read in their breaks. Others didn't regard them as eccentric. There may have been some resentment that they didn't get more conversation, particularly in isolated circumstances like night shifts, but they weren't regarded as eccentric.

Mobile phones have reduced the numbers, and Kindles replaced books, but there are still a lot of readers out there..... 

zagfles

eskbanker said:

AmityNeon said:

If a value is reduced by 20%, by what percentage must the reduced value be increased to match the original value? Some say 20%, and some just give up on answering.

See also many threads on the pensions board about how tax relief works!

Or on whether to save in a pension or ISA. Some people believe an ISA is better because growth in a pension will be mostly taxable when you withdraw it whereas growth in an ISA is never taxed. Their reasoning is (usually) flawed because they don't understand basic maths, ie that multiplication is commutative.

AmityNeon

zagfles said:

Beddie said:

Millyonare said:

The UK should really make all pupils 14-16yo do a GCSE in Arithmetic -- and not leave school until they achieve grade 4 / C or better.

For the vast majority of employees and employers, simple arithmetic is all the maths they will mostly ever need to use in work or home or for personal finances.

Mandatory GCSE Arithmetic would noticeably improve UK productivity.

I get your point, but not everyone is capable of being good at arithmetic. In the same way I cannot draw or paint, others cannot work with numbers. And just forcing them will put them off for life. There should be plenty of encouraging, yes, and also schools should do realistic scenarios e.g. wages, tax, renting, buying a house etc. instead of the "dry" maths mostly taught. Have it as a project, not just a lesson.

Yes, stuff like algebra is a good example. It can be used for all sorts of useful things, I've just used it to work out how much I should be spending on my Barclaycard to get best value from the balance transfer I've just done. But most people just learn it at school then forget about it because they don't see the practical use for it, because it was never taught in the context of real life scenarios.

Basic algebra is wonderfully applicable as it only requires logic. Recently we wanted to determine whether it was worth 'renewing' LBG Regular Savers to their higher rates, which resulted in generic formulas. Simplifying can take a bit of arithmetic training and perhaps an affinity for numbers, but simplifying isn't strictly necessary with calculators doing the heavy lifting.

zagfles

AmityNeon said:

zagfles said:

Beddie said:

Millyonare said:

The UK should really make all pupils 14-16yo do a GCSE in Arithmetic -- and not leave school until they achieve grade 4 / C or better.

For the vast majority of employees and employers, simple arithmetic is all the maths they will mostly ever need to use in work or home or for personal finances.

Mandatory GCSE Arithmetic would noticeably improve UK productivity.

I get your point, but not everyone is capable of being good at arithmetic. In the same way I cannot draw or paint, others cannot work with numbers. And just forcing them will put them off for life. There should be plenty of encouraging, yes, and also schools should do realistic scenarios e.g. wages, tax, renting, buying a house etc. instead of the "dry" maths mostly taught. Have it as a project, not just a lesson.

Yes, stuff like algebra is a good example. It can be used for all sorts of useful things, I've just used it to work out how much I should be spending on my Barclaycard to get best value from the balance transfer I've just done. But most people just learn it at school then forget about it because they don't see the practical use for it, because it was never taught in the context of real life scenarios.

Basic algebra is wonderfully applicable as it only requires logic. Recently we wanted to determine whether it was worth 'renewing' LBG Regular Savers to their higher rates, which resulted in generic formulas. Simplifying can take a bit of arithmetic training and perhaps an affinity for numbers, but simplifying isn't strictly necessary with calculators doing the heavy lifting.

Not sure about only logic, you do need a bit of arithmetric training. Rearranging an equation is usually as hard or harder than "simplifying", and you can't use a (normal) calculator for that, and you do need to rearrange when the value you're resolving for is on both sides of the equation. That doesn't seem to be the case with your regular saver formula, so although it looks complicated it is probably simpler in that the value you are calculating is only on one side of the formula, so no rearranging is necessary.

The Barclaycard one is a fairly simple example of what I'm talking about. The idea is I want best value from the balance transfer I've done. Normally with balance transfers you pay min payment every month which reduces the amount you're getting at 0% every month, so you don't get full value of the interest free credit on the whole amount for the whole period.

But with Barclaycard, you can spend and if that spending is paid off then no interest is charged on the spending (not the case with some other cards).

Min payment is 2.25% of the total of spending and balance transfer. So you need to spend enough so that 2.25% of the spending plus balance transfer equals the spending. So spending is on both sides of the formula, and spending is what you want to know.

So eg I've done a balance transfer (inc fee) of £5000. How much do I need to spend? If s is spend then

(5000+s)*0.0225=s

5000*0.0225 + 0.0225s = s

5000*0.0225 = s(1-0.0225)

s = 5000*0.0225/(1-0.0225)

s = 115.09

Confirm that 5115.09 * 0.0225 = 115.09

zagfles

(Removed by Forum Team)

See that's the problem with some people and maths, as touched on earlier. Maths is seen as boring, being bad at maths is like a badge of honour, "I'm not a boring geek". They think it makes them look more interesting.

So even on page 8 of a thread discussing technical details of interest calculation, on a site called "moneysavingexpert" where the technicalities of saving money are (or should be) the main topic of discussion, someone feels the need to call a bit of simple algebra used to illustrate a point "boring".

Loads of threads here and other places go in depth on details on all sorts of stuff most people would find boring, but not many people feel the need to post "Booooooorrrrrring". But maths seems to be an exception...perhaps along with trainspotting where people seem to enjoy making others feel a freak for being interested in something most people would find boring.

Anyway, I don't care if I've bored anyone. Move along, go read a more interesting site. I like maths and put it to practical use all the time, the only reason I can afford to retire early is a good understanding of finance and maths, and I will discuss it here even if some people find it boring.

Feel free to reply with a Tw*tter style one liner which you think makes you sound interesting.

Malthusian

zagfles said:

But you do get calculators telling you 1 + 2 x 3 = 9 when the correct answer is 7. Try the Windows calculator in standard mode, then try it in scientific mode.

Anyone with a C in IT will tell you that you asked the calculator what (1 + 2) x 3 is and it answered correctly. Not the computer's fault that your input wasn't the same as the question you wanted to ask.
You don't need to be Einstein to understand that the "standard mode" executes each operation as it goes along.

Exodi

Beddie said:

Millyonare said:

The UK should really make all pupils 14-16yo do a GCSE in Arithmetic -- and not leave school until they achieve grade 4 / C or better.

For the vast majority of employees and employers, simple arithmetic is all the maths they will mostly ever need to use in work or home or for personal finances.

Mandatory GCSE Arithmetic would noticeably improve UK productivity.

I get your point, but not everyone is capable of being good at arithmetic. In the same way I cannot draw or paint, others cannot work with numbers. And just forcing them will put them off for life. There should be plenty of encouraging, yes, and also schools should do realistic scenarios e.g. wages, tax, renting, buying a house etc. instead of the "dry" maths mostly taught. Have it as a project, not just a lesson.

To be honest, I don't agree (and I'm going to start sounding Rishi Sunak now).

There's nowhere near the number of people claiming to be bad at reading or writing. The difference being that it is isn't generally socially acceptable to be able to read and write, whereas it is socially acceptable to be bad at Maths. 

I completely agree about the schools point, and to be honest I feel it beggars belief that they teach things with limited use cases, like Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, as part of the standard curriculum, but nothing absolutely nothing about tax, interest rates, etc.

You can see examples of social attitudes to Maths in this very thread, zagfles articulates the point far better than I can:

zagfles said:

retiringtoosoon said:

zagfles said:

AmityNeon said:

zagfles said:

Beddie said:

Millyonare said:

The UK should really make all pupils 14-16yo do a GCSE in Arithmetic -- and not leave school until they achieve grade 4 / C or better.

For the vast majority of employees and employers, simple arithmetic is all the maths they will mostly ever need to use in work or home or for personal finances.

Mandatory GCSE Arithmetic would noticeably improve UK productivity.

I get your point, but not everyone is capable of being good at arithmetic. In the same way I cannot draw or paint, others cannot work with numbers. And just forcing them will put them off for life. There should be plenty of encouraging, yes, and also schools should do realistic scenarios e.g. wages, tax, renting, buying a house etc. instead of the "dry" maths mostly taught. Have it as a project, not just a lesson.

Yes, stuff like algebra is a good example. It can be used for all sorts of useful things, I've just used it to work out how much I should be spending on my Barclaycard to get best value from the balance transfer I've just done. But most people just learn it at school then forget about it because they don't see the practical use for it, because it was never taught in the context of real life scenarios.

Basic algebra is wonderfully applicable as it only requires logic. Recently we wanted to determine whether it was worth 'renewing' LBG Regular Savers to their higher rates, which resulted in generic formulas. Simplifying can take a bit of arithmetic training and perhaps an affinity for numbers, but simplifying isn't strictly necessary with calculators doing the heavy lifting.

Not sure about only logic, you do need a bit of arithmetric training. Rearranging an equation is usually as hard or harder than "simplifying", and you can't use a (normal) calculator for that, and you do need to rearrange when the value you're resolving for is on both sides of the equation. That doesn't seem to be the case with your regular saver formula, so although it looks complicated it is probably simpler in that the value you are calculating is only on one side of the formula, so no rearranging is necessary.

The Barclaycard one is a fairly simple example of what I'm talking about. The idea is I want best value from the balance transfer I've done. Normally with balance transfers you pay min payment every month which reduces the amount you're getting at 0% every month, so you don't get full value of the interest free credit on the whole amount for the whole period.

But with Barclaycard, you can spend and if that spending is paid off then no interest is charged on the spending (not the case with some other cards).

Min payment is 2.25% of the total of spending and balance transfer. So you need to spend enough so that 2.25% of the spending plus balance transfer equals the spending. So spending is on both sides of the formula, and spending is what you want to know.

So eg I've done a balance transfer (inc fee) of £5000. How much do I need to spend? If s is spend then

(5000+s)*0.0225=s

5000*0.0225 + 0.0225s = s

5000*0.0225 = s(1-0.0225)

s = 5000*0.0225/(1-0.0225)

s = 115.09

Confirm that 5115.09 * 0.0225 = 115.09

Booooooorrrrrring!

See that's the problem with some people and maths, as touched on earlier. Maths is seen as boring, being bad at maths is like a badge of honour, "I'm not a boring geek". They think it makes them look more interesting.

So even on page 8 of a thread discussing technical details of interest calculation, on a site called "moneysavingexpert" where the technicalities of saving money are (or should be) the main topic of discussion, someone feels the need to call a bit of simple algebra used to illustrate a point "boring".

Loads of threads here and other places go in depth on details on all sorts of stuff most people would find boring, but not many people feel the need to post "Booooooorrrrrring". But maths seems to be an exception...

I think it should be just as embarrassing for someone to say "oh I'm no good at Maths" as it is to say "oh I can't read".

anakeimai

At the risk of re-entering the fray...  Thanks everyone for your comments and especially the meaningful answers, though - as a newbie to this - I'm a little surprised at some of the critical/disparaging comments in some of the replies.  My understanding was that Martin's MoneySavingExpert site was designed for people who don't understand things and come here to find answers (which by the way it is brilliant at), so contributors having a right old go at ones for being stupid, or not being able to add up seems a bit of a disappointing paraodox...

Albermarle

anakeimai said:

At the risk of re-entering the fray...  Thanks everyone for your comments and especially the meaningful answers, though - as a newbie to this - I'm a little surprised at some of the critical/disparaging comments in some of the replies.  My understanding was that Martin's MoneySavingExpert site was designed for people who don't understand things and come here to find answers (which by the way it is brilliant at), so contributors having a right old go at ones for being stupid, or not being able to add up seems a bit of a disappointing paraodox...

I can understand your comment. Some threads can go a bit off topic.
However your comment about the offer being designed to deceive, probably sparked off more of a reaction than your post would have done otherwise.

Malthusian

Exodi said:

I think it should be just as embarrassing for someone to say "oh I'm no good at Maths" as it is to say "oh I can't read".

Those aren't equivalent statements though. One says not being good at something and the other says total inability. 
Equivalent statements would be "I can't count" and "I can't read". And most adults would be embarrassed to admit they can't count.
If someone says "I'm no good at maths" they mean they struggle to do subtraction, multiplication etc, not that they don't know which coins to take out of their purse or where to find Aisle 7. "I can't read" means illiteracy.
Someone who does know which letter means which sound but finds it frustratingly slow or struggles to write a grammatically correct email would say "I'm not great with spelling" or "I'm not a big reader". Or "I'm dyslexic". None of those carry much stigma.