Overview
Having good maths skills are important for everyday life. In fact, you may have never noticed how often you use maths on a day-to-day basis. This free course is an introduction to Level 2 Essential Skills in maths that’s designed to inspire you to improve your current maths skills and help you to remember any areas that you may have forgotten.Working through the examples and interactive activities in this course will help you to, among other things, calculate how much paint you’ll need for decorating, convert currencies or make progress in your career or further education. To complete this course you will need access to a calculator, a notepad and pen, and a protractor.Enrolling on this course will give you the opportunity to earn an Open University digital badge. The badge is a great way to demonstrate your interest in the subject. What you learn by completing the course will really help if you wish to enrol on a formal qualification. Once you are signed in, you can manage your digital badges online from your OpenLearn Profile. In addition, you can download and print your OpenLearn Statement of participation – which also displays your badge.This course has been produced as part of the Department for Education’s Flexible Learning Fund, the Higher Educational Funding Council for Wales and with the kind support of Dangoor Education, the educational arm of The Exilarch’s Foundation.This free course was written by Kerry Lloyd, Frances Hughes and Tracy Mitchell at Coleg Cambria, in partnership with Addysg Oedolion Cymru | Adult Learning Wales, Coleg Gwent, the NPTC Group of Colleges and The Open University, and in collaboration with Joanne Davies, West Herts College, using materials belonging to the Open School Trust Ltd (trading as the National Extension College), and in partnership with the Bedford College Group and Middlesbrough College.
Syllabus
- Introduction and guidance
- Introduction and guidance
- What is a badged course?
- How to get a badge
- Session1Session 1: Working with numbers
- Introduction
- 1 Four operations
- 1.1 Expressing a remainder as a decimal
- 1.2 Interpreting answers when dividing
- 1.3 Dealing with decimals
- 2 Dealing with large numbers
- 2.1 Calculations with large numbers
- 3 Rounding
- 3.1 Rounding to a degree of accuracy
- 3.2 Rounding to approximate an answer
- 4 Multistage calculations
- 5 Negative numbers
- 6 Mathematical terms
- 7 Fractions
- 7.1 Simplifying fractions
- 7.2 Writing a quantity of an amount as a fraction
- 7.3 Fractions of amounts
- 8 Percentages
- 8.1 Calculating a percentage of an amount
- 8.2 Expressing one number as a percentage of another
- 8.3 Percentage change
- 9 Fractions, decimals and percentages
- 9.1 Converting between percentages, decimals and fractions
- 9.2 Changing a fraction to a percentage
- 9.3 Changing a fraction to a decimal
- 10 Ratio
- 10.1 Simplifying ratios
- 10.2 Solving ratio problems where the total is given
- 10.3 Solving ratio problems where the total of one part of the ratio is given
- 10.4 Solving ratio problems where only the difference in amounts is given
- 10.5 Other applications of ratio
- 11 Formulas
- 11.1 Order of operations
- 11.2 Formulas in practice
- 12 Checking your answers
- 13 Session 1 quiz
- 14 Session 1 summary
- Session2Session 2: Units of measure
- Introduction
- 1 Units of measure
- 1.1 Converting units of measure in the same system
- 2 Converting currencies and measures between different systems
- 2.1 Converting currencies
- 2.2 Converting units of measure between different systems
- 3 Time, timetables and average speed
- 3.1 Calculating with time and timetables
- 3.2 Converting units of time
- 3.3 Average speed
- 4 Temperature
- 4.1 Celsius and Fahrenheit formulas
- 5 Reading scales
- 5.1 Scale examples
- 5.2 Scales and measuring instruments
- 5.3 Using conversion scales
- 6 Session 2 quiz
- 7 Session 2 summary
- Session3Session 3: Shape and space
- Introduction
- 1 Perimeter
- 1.1 Perimeter of simple shapes
- 1.2 Perimeters of shapes with missing lengths
- 1.3 Circumference of a circle
- 2 Area
- 2.1 Area of simple shapes
- 2.2 Area of compound shapes
- 2.3 Area of a circle
- 3 Volume
- 4 How many will fit?
- 5 Scale drawings and plans
- 5.1 Scale drawing method and problems
- 6 Session 3 quiz
- 7 Session 3 summary
- Session4Session 4: Handling data
- Introduction
- 1 Discrete and continuous data
- 2 Tally charts, frequency tables and data collection sheets
- 3 Bar charts
- 3.1 Features of a bar chart
- 3.2 Interpreting bar charts
- 4 Pie charts
- 4.1 Drawing pie charts
- 4.2 Interpreting pie charts
- 5 Line graphs
- 5.1 Drawing line graphs
- 5.2 Interpreting line graphs
- 6 Mean, median, mode and range
- 6.1 Range
- 6.2 Mean average
- 6.3 Finding the mean from a set of data
- 6.4 Finding the mean from a frequency table
- 6.5 Calculating the median
- 6.6 Calculating the mode
- 6.7 Choosing the best average
- 7 Probability
- 8 End-of-course quiz
- 9 Session 4 summary
- 10 Bringing it all together
- 11 Next steps
- Acknowledgements