Memories of high school may bring a smile to your lips but likely, those mathematics formulae still haunt you. Despite everything your teachers said back then, it is likely that mathematics in school was just a thorn in the flesh.

A random survey on how many people didn’t really like mathematics in high school will likely show a higher percentage of people voting for varying degrees of dislike.

While it may be true that many of the maths classes you sat in (endured) are not useful in your day-to-day activities. It is impossible to deny that it helped build your problem solving and critical thinking skills.

Also, daily no matter what your activities are, it will involve adding, subtracting, multiplying and division. All of which are basic functions in mathematics.

However, besides the basics, we bring four formulae that you may have had to use today or not too long ago. You may also have to use them again.

1. Proportionality: in mathematics, two varying quantities relate proportionally if their ratios or products give a constant. While this may sound obscure, proportionality is what many use when they compare prices and quantities.

For example, when you find that the price of a pen is N50 and you quickly calculate that the price of 10 will be N500, you have used proportionality, a mathematical calculation, in that instance.

2. Percentage: it is defined as a number or ratio expressed as a fraction of 100. Many times, you see that something is sold at a particular discount. The percentage cut off from a product’s price is easy to calculate with the right formula.

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If a shoe that is N10,000 is being sold for a 20% discount, here is what it means: the shoe is currently available for N8,000.

20% is the same thing as 20 divided by 100 then multiplied by the original price (N10,000), which gives N2,000. Thus, N2,000 is removed from the original price.

3. Profit and Loss: almost everyone can calculate their profit or loss. This is one formula that high school mathematics likely inculcated in all students. All you have to do is subtract your capital (amount invested) from the amount you realised (either from rendering a service or selling a product).

If there is any money left from the above calculation, then it is a profitable situation and if not, it is a loss.

4. Rate of change: a rate of change is a rate that describes how one quantity changes in relation to another quantity. Another simple way to understand this is how price changes with time.

For example, if the price of a bag of rice increases from N10,000 to N20,000 within a year. The rate of change is the difference in price (N10,000) by the time (1 year). It is interpreted as; it takes one year for the price of a bag of rice to go up by N10,000.

Feeling like a mathematician already? It proves that high school mathematics was not just a burden after all.

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