7 Reasons

Tag: maths

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Should Have Paid Attention in Your GCSE Maths Class

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Should Have Paid Attention in Your GCSE Maths Class

    Okay, I’ll admit it. It’s been a while since I had to break out the old sine, cosine and tangent, but it has to be said that paying attention in GCSE maths has paid off on many an occasion. I’m not talking Integrals of inverse functions or anything uber-smart like that – just good old fashioned maths. So kids, if you’re reading this thinking maths is just a waste of time, think again! Here are seven reasons why you should pay attention in your GCSE Maths class.

    7 Reasons You Should Have Paid Attention In Your GCSE Maths Class

    1.  Going Dutch. Why does splitting the bill after dinner with friends always turn out to be such a trauma? Everyone will swear blind that they’ve chipped in more than enough to cover their share, but somehow you’re always a tenner short. Even ‘going Dutch’ means a round of long division. If you weren’t paying attention at school you’d best just hope that the public display of maths skill doesn’t land on your plate to divvy up. If it does you best get counting on those fingers and toes, either that or reach for your smartphone and breakout the calculator app!

    2.  TV Test. As if buying a TV wasn’t complicated enough with all that LCD, LED, plasma talk, you also need to break out your old GSCE maths notes to ensure you get the right size, ratio and resolution. First of all what’s with all that inches stuff – we were taught in cm. Let’s just hope you were paying attention when they taught you how to convert inches to centimetres, or you could end up trying to fit a JumboTron in your living room. Screen ratios have pretty much been standardised to 16:9 these days, but you do need to know what screen resolution you want and it’s not just a matter of standard definition or HD either – with HD coming in 3 flavours 720p, 1080i and 1080p. Bet you wish you’d paid attention to Sir now don’t you?

    3.  Perfect Pizza. It’s those pesky inches at play again here. Fail to get a grasp imperial conversion when you’re browsing your local takeaway menu and you’ll either end up with a child’s portion or a pizza the size of a dustbin lid. Okay, so ordering too much pizza isn’t the end of the world – unless of course you’re ordering from that well known pizza delivery place and your all out of vouchers. Oooh – that’s gonna cost you!

    4.  DIY Disaster. Not buying the right amount of emulsion paint can be a pain, but it’s not the end of the world. However, miscalculate the number of rolls of wallpaper you need and it could spell trouble. Yes, that’s right – buying wallpaper requires major maths skills. You’ll need to consider wall height and width, allow for doorways, windows and radiators and worst of all, the dreaded pattern repeat! Don’t think you can just pop down to your local DIY store and buy an extra roll if you run out either. Oh-no! Every roll has a specific batch number which means you’d best get it right first time, or you’ll be staring at an odd strip of wallpaper for the next several years before you strip it all off and start again.

    5.  Fuel Failure. Weren’t paying attention in GCSE maths when they taught you all about litres? Then owning a car is going to be fun – especially with the price of fuel these days. Unless you’ve got pots of expendable income, you’re going to want to just how much petrol or diesel your car is guzzling. Okay, so plenty of new cars do this for you, but let’s be honest, those trip computers are never very accurate and you’re far better off getting your mind around those MPG calculations yourself.

    6.  Utility Futility. Even the best mathematicians struggle when it comes to interpreting their utility bills, so if you weren’t paying attention at school it might just blow your mind. With energy companies hiking rates more often than they drop them and constantly ‘estimating’ how much you owe them, this is one area you really must master to avoid being ripped off. Be on the ball here and you could save yourself a small fortune in unnecessary payments. Leave it to the energy companies and they’ll just keep on ‘estimating’ – usually in their favour.

    7.  Pi Eyed. Let’s hope you were paying attention when your GCSE maths teacher told you all about Pi. Not only will knowing all about Pi ensure you are always able to calculate the circumference of any circle, it will also prevent you from looking like a fool by mistakenly shouting out “Yeah, my favourite type of Pi is rhubarb” when trying to join in an intelligent sounding conversation at the local boozer.

    About The Author: Michael writes for iTutorMaths, if you want to get your maths up to scratch, then iTutor can provide you with an online maths tutor.

  • 7 Reasons That 24th December Should Be Known As The Day of the Sausage

    7 Reasons That 24th December Should Be Known As The Day of the Sausage

    Hi there, it’s the day before Christmas and at other humour websites, you could probably expect to find some sort of Christmas Eve themed piece today, cynically concocted to gain the maximum amount of traffic by exploiting the festive mood.  But not here.  Because at 7 Reasons(.org) we have had a great and noble idea.  We’ve come to realise that Christmas Eve is just a little too Christmassy.  Similarly, it’s also occurred to us that it’s just not sausagey enough.  When was the last time that your thoughts turned to sausages on Christmas Eve?  But we think that’s wrong, and we want to change it.  So we see this piece as a clarion call, a rallying cry, because we firmly believe that Christmas Eve should be known as The Day of the Sausage, and here are seven reasons why.

    Churchill was never without a sausage.

    1.  Rennie. You might think that The Day of the Sausage falling on Christmas Eve is a tremendous coincidence. It isn’t. In fact it has been meticulously planned. At Christmas, you can’t move for two things. People and indigestion tablets. The world is full of them. It is full of indigestion tablets because the day that follows The Day of the Sausage is Christmas Day. A day when, regardless of your religious views, you eat a lot. It’s like a rule. When better therefore to hold The Day of the Sausage? You can spend all of 24th December eating sausages knowing that you will have both enough days and enough tablets to recover.

    2.  Vegetarians. Quite how vegetarians survive without meat is probably the one thing I wouldn’t want to be asked when faced with the One Million Pound question by Chris Tarrant. But that’s okay, because I am never going to be asked. I can live content in the knowledge that there are meat substitute products our there for the herbivores among us and no more prominent are they than during the Christmas period. In amongst the people and the indigestion tablets are vegetarian sausages and vegetarian sausages on cocktail sticks and vegetarian sausages wrapped in something that should really be bacon. They have already been catered for! If The Day of the Sausage fell on June 30th, shops would have to fill their shelves with vegetarian sausages twice a year, but with it falling on 24th December they only need to do it once. Which means they can sell proper food in June to go on my barbecue. Never let it be said that we don’t consider the economic elements when we write.

    3.  Maths.  Christmas Eve falls on the 24th of December, and you can make that number out of sausages.  You’re probably looking at the numbers 2 and 4 right now thinking, oh no you can’t.  But you’re wrong.  Because sausages come in many forms, but the two most common types of sausage are the straight sausage and the circular sausage (which is essentially a longer version of the straight sausage that can go round corners).  And you can make the number 24 from them.  Here it is.  In binary.

    11000 (24) displayed in sausage
    Coincidentally, this is just the right amount of sausages for two average sausage consumers to share.

    4.  Clarification. If you Google the words ‘Sausage Day’ you will be both disappointed and confused. (Unless you’re a pervert). There is no such thing as an International Sausage Day. Nor a National Sausage Day. Nor just a Sausage Day. There are however various Sausage Weeks. Yes, that’s right. Various Sausage Weeks. More than one. That’s not right! In 2010, British Sausage Week ran from 1st-7th November. However, the Egerton Arms in Knutsford, Cheshire, ran their Sausage Week from 3rd-12th November! Which raises another issue. Do they have 10-day weeks in Knutsford? But that is an issue for another day. Back to the sausages. And to the Cumberland Sausage Day. That falls on 5th July. Yes, it’s a Sausage Day, but a Sausage Day for just one kind of sausage. That is sausagist in anyone’s language. Except French. Where is would be saucissonist. The Day of the Sausage would eliminate such exclusivity and allow the whole world to know exactly when to celebrate their sausage. And that has to be a good thing.

    5.  Harmony.  The Day of the Sausage and Christmas Eve won’t conflict with each other.  In fact, to borrow a phrase from George W. Bush, they should be able to co-exist peacefully.  You can even make the traditional Christmas Eve nativity scene using them, as this heartwarming depiction of the birth of the baby Jesusage shows.

    it's a nativity scene constructed from meat.
    We assume that Americans did this.

    6.  Shopping. In something of an exclusive to our 7 Reasons readers, we can reveal that The Day of the Sausage has a sub-agenda. Let us ask you a question. What will you be doing on The Day of the Sausage? The correct answer is eating sausages, celebrating sausages and having your photo taken while hovering your sausage over your top lip so it looks like a moustache. What won’t you be doing? Last-minute Christmas shopping. That’s right, everyone will have forgotten about Christmas. The shops will be empty. So while everyone is celebrating bangers, we will be in Halfords deciding whether our respective partners would prefer the de-icer or some reflectors for their bikes. And because we are kind, both of our readers can join us too.

    7.  Santa.  On Christmas Eve Santa comes to visit you, and how do you reward him while he’s emptying his sack into your stockings?  You give him a glass of whisky (he likes a 12 year old Highland Park by the way, don’t ask how we know this) and a mince pie.  But a mince pie is essentially a dessert.  A teeny-tiny dessert.  But look at Santa.  He’s a big, fat, ruddy faced man engaged in a hard job of work on his busiest day of the year.  And you want to give him a pastry confection!   That’s hardly adequate sustenance.  What Santa needs is something more nutritious and something more filling to keep him going.  He needs sausages.  And double the quantity of whisky while you’re at it.*

    *The 7 Reasons team would like to wish you a very merry Sausage Day, and a happy Christmas.

  • 7 Reasons That Seven is the Wrong Number

    7 Reasons That Seven is the Wrong Number

    A big, red number 7 (seven)

    1.  Socks.  Our washing machine broke recently.  It was calamitous.  I was down to my last seven socks when the washing-machine-man came and mended it – and seven is certainly the wrong number of socks.  Only two of them matched each other – the pink ones.  The other five were variously; ropey, frumpy, crappy, bobbly and greasy.  Which reminds me.

    2.  Dwarves.  Seven is too few dwarves for a good song: “Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it’s off to work we go” is the best you can expect from seven dwarves, and that’s rubbish.  No one’s that jolly on their way to work (except dolphin trainers, and that’s not even a real job).  But if you get a greater number of dwarves and paint them orange, they’ll sing “Ooompa-Loompa, doompadee-doo”, which are far superior lyrics that everyone can relate to.  And they’ll make you some chocolate while they sing them.

    3.  Maths.  Seven is a prime number, and it was while I was trying to come up with a mathematical explanation of a prime number that this occurred to me:  We call maths maths.  Americans call maths math.  If we follow the logic of the British way of doing things, then surely mathematical should be mathsematical, mathematics should be mathsematics and a mathematician should be a mathsematician.  But they’re not.  This means that we are wrong and Americans are right – which is very, very, very wrong indeed.   Thinking about the number seven made me realise this.

    4.  Viagra.  When a man takes one Viagra pill, his penis assumes the shape of the number 1 for a considerable time. Therefore, if a man takes seven Viagra pills, his penis must assume the shape of the number 7 for a considerable time. I’m not sure why anyone would want a 7 shaped penis – unless they wanted to make love to someone round a corner – so it’s probably the wrong number of pills to take.  I don’t know how taking 7 Viagra pills would affect a woman*, but I would advise against it; it may tousle the hair…or…something.

    5.  Human pyramid.  Seven is the wrong number of people to construct a human pyramid.  You can make one with six, but then the seventh person is just standing about, feeling left-out and unloved.  Or it will lead to a human rhombus, and no one wants one of those.

    6.  Brides.  Exhaustive research on Wikipedia has yielded the statistic that between 2% and 13% of people are gay.  This means that, in the film Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, seven is the wrong number of brides.  The brothers (0.14 to 0.91 of whom would be gay) would require 6.09 to 6.86 brides and between 0.14 and .91 additional grooms**.  So, logically, the film should be called 6.09 to 6.86 Brides and Between 0.14 and 0.91 Grooms For Seven Brothers.  I’m only about 85% sure that my calculations are correct but I am 100% certain that at least 50% of the 7 Reasons team now has a headache.

    7.  Reasons.  It’s a well known fact that there are only six reasons for anything.  Don’t just take my word for it.  Ask Jonathan Lee, he’s an expert.

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    *I’m not a real doctor

    **Nor am I a mathsematician.