• Question: How do you use maths daily?

    Asked by Daisy to Tom, Sebastian J, ryanellison, Penny T, margaretduff, Jess, Caroline, Amy, allysonmcintyre on 9 Dec 2025.
    • Photo: Ryan Ellison

      Ryan Ellison answered on 9 Dec 2025:


      I use maths the most in my daily life when baking! For a lot of baking recepies, the amount of ingredients you use specifically doesn’t matter, so much as the ratio between the ingredients. For example, when making shortbread, you want a ratio of 3 parts flour to 2 parts butter to one part sugar, by weight. So if I accidentally add too much sugar, I can just scale the rest of the ingredients up to match!

    • Photo: Caroline Roche

      Caroline Roche answered on 11 Dec 2025:


      In daily life it’s usually working out which product is actually cheaper in the shops e.g. £2.50 for 500g of flour or £3.50 for 1kg (It can get more complicated when they use different units).
      In work life, it’s similar making conversions from an electrical signal into readable units e.g. 4..20mA to a temperature reading or working out how long until all the data we record uses all the space in the computers memory – most of the time it is just simple calculations, but you have to work out the best way to calculate things – that takes the longest time.

    • Photo: Allyson McIntyre

      Allyson McIntyre answered on 6 Jan 2026:


      As previous answers have suggested simple maths is used on a daily basis both in and out of work. Working in a chemistry department some of our scientists can use more complex mathematical equations to understand things about the chemistry. For example understanding the mixing properties within a reaction to understand which order to add the chemicals to get the most efficient experiment. This can involve using equations and rearranging those equations. There are a lot of software’s available that help with the calculations, however, its always useful to understand what is happening so you can ensure its working properly.

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