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Introduction

In today’s society, we are bombarded with numerical information—numbers appear everywhere. Numbers are in the media and the news, and they are embedded in sports and in game results and player performances. When we drive a car, when we go shopping, when we make measurements – numbers and calculations are involved.

This chapter looks at how critical it is to understand numbers when we read and interpret maths in real life. It is important to be able to recognise and decide what calculation or operation is required when we need to solve a problem, so we will also look at how to make those decisions.

Learning intentions

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to do the following:

• understand the numbers we encounter in everyday life, including integers, positive numbers, negative numbers, fractions, percentages, decimals and rates

• write numbers using appropriate conventions

• understand the place value of numbers and what each digit means

• convert between equivalent fractions, decimals and percentages

• use mathematical operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponentiation

• apply the problem-solving cycle to complete investigations related to the topics contained within this chapter.

Interview to come.

Stories from a wide range of careers where maths is required will help students relate the maths in the Foundation course to a varierty of professional contexts.