Like it or not, maths is used in most aspects of daily life.

Many of the top jobs such as business consultants, computer consultants, airline pilots, company directors and a host of others require a solid understanding of basic maths, and in some cases require a quite detailed knowledge of maths.

You may think that you would like to program computer games as a job, but don't bother to do well at maths, you'll end up receiving lots of "Unfortunately you have been unsuccessful……" letters. Even though programming of computer games seems to be unrelated to maths, it is full of mathematical techniques such as effects of translation, rotation, symmetry, coordinate geometry, vectors, angles, bearings etc.

"Why do business consultants and directors need to know maths?" you may ask. Business is all about selling a product or service to make money. All transactions within a business have to be recorded in the Company accounts and quite often involve very large sums of money. So for example, you need to be able to estimate the effect of changing numbers in the accounts when trying to work out your expected performance for next year. Also businesses rely heavily on using percentages, in particular anyone who works as a sales person will need to be quick at mental arithmetic, approximation and in working out percentages. The more percentage discount you give a customer when you sell them a product, the less profit your company will make (and quite often the less you will be paid!) so it really does pay to know your maths.

You may think that pilots only need to know how to fly a plane. However, there are lots of other things which pilots need to be concerned with such as the air temperature, air pressure, air speed, altitude (height), rate of descent (speed when coming in to land), glide path (ideal angle to approach for landing) etc. Sometimes pilots will need to do calculations based on readings of certain instruments - familiarity with numbers and manipulating numbers quickly is very important here. Also, pilots will be expected to be able to navigate. This will involve calculating how far they will travel, how much fuel they will use, what bearings should be taken to reach their destination etc. You need to be competent at maths to work on the flight deck, if you are not you may be putting passengers lives at risk!

"Great, but what if I don't want a top job?" you may be asking. Well, look at a couple of examples of other jobs:

If you work as a self-employed tradesperson e.g plumber, electrician, painter and decorator etc. then you will need to do business accounts and in some cases cater for VAT which needs to be added to the price of each job at the rate of 17.5 % . You will also be able to claim back VAT at the same rate from any materials you need to buy to do the job. You may also get customers who want a percentage discount - in this case you need to be able to work out a realistic percentage so that you don't end up doing the work for nothing! Some trades require you to know more maths than others. For example, An electrician needs to know that Voltage = Current x Resistance - so how does he work out resistance if he knows the Voltage and Current? By using maths - rearrangement of formulae to be precise.

Finally, there are jobs around where you can escape from using any maths at all - refuse collecter, builder's labourer, farm hand etc. However, when you invest your hard earned cash in the bank or building society or get a loan - how do you know that you are not being ripped off. You need to use maths to calculate compound interest rates (to see how much your savings can grow). You also need to use maths to understand the monthly percentages which are added to your credit cards or bank loans or you could end up paying £10,000 in 5 years time for borrowing £2,000 today! If this isn't a good reason to understand maths, I don't know what is.