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Succeed with maths – Part 1

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Does maths feel like a bit of a mystery to you? Are you looking to improve your confidence in using maths in a variety of everyday situations? If so, this free course, Succeed with maths – Part 1, is for you.

Beginning with the very foundations of maths, this course will start by looking at how numbers are put together, before guiding you through how to use percentages, fractions and negative numbers. Taking real-life examples you will have the opportunity to practise your new skills and build your confidence in using maths to solve problems in everyday life and the wider world.

This course will encourage you to not just mechanically follow the rules that are written to help with maths, but to also gain an understanding and appreciation of what lies behind these rules.

Transcript

Enrolling on the course will give you the opportunity to earn an Open University digital badge. Badges are not accredited by The Open University but they're a great way to demonstrate your interest in the subject and commitment to your career, and to provide evidence of continuing professional development.

Once you are signed in, you can manage your digital badges online from My OpenLearn. In addition, you can download and print your OpenLearn statement of participation - which also displays your Open University badge.

The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey. Once you complete the course we would also value your feedback and suggestions for future improvement, in our optional end-of-course survey. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.

Learning outcomes

After completing this course you will be able to:

use maths in a variety of everyday situations
understand how to use percentages, fractions and negative numbers in some everyday situations
begin to develop different problem-solving skills
use a calculator effectively.

Earn this free Open University digital badge if you complete this course! The badge can be displayed, shared and downloaded as a marker of your achievement. The badge is awarded for completing the course and passing the quizzes.

First Published: 28/04/2014

Updated: 25/03/2020

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You can start this course right now without signing-up. Click on any of the course content sections below to start at any point in this course.
If you want to be able to track your progress, earn a free Statement of Participation, and access all course quizzes and activities, sign-up.

Course content

- Introduction and guidance
- Current section:
  Introduction and guidance
  Succeed with maths – Part 1 is a free badged course which lasts 8 weeks, with approximately 3 hours' study time each week. You can work through the course at your own pace, so if you have more time one week there is no problem with pushing on to complete another week’s study.You'll start with the most familiar territory of how numbers are put together and look at addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. In the following weeks you'll move on to look at fractions, percen...
  - What is a badged course?
  - How to get a badge
- Acknowledgements
- week1Week 1: Getting started with maths
- Current section:
  Introduction
  In this first week you will be focusing on some introductory maths activities. Some of these problems may seem more like puzzles than mathematics, and others will clearly fall into the category of maths problems. To help you there will be hints for you to use, if you need them. All of these puzzles bring up points about how to engage in maths and what is useful to know. You’ll also start to learn how to use your calculator, and to understand how we put numbers together.In the following...
- 1 Getting started: puzzles and real-world maths
- 2 Getting to know your calculator
  - 2.1 Another calculator activity
- 3 Problem solving
  - 3.1 New vehicle
- 4 Understanding numbers
- 5 This week's quiz
- 6 Summary
- Acknowledgements
- Week 1 practice quiz
- week2Week 2: Everyday maths
- Current section:
  Introduction
  In this week you will investigate the four basic operations used in maths, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, as well as the closely related idea of powers or exponents. When using all of these, it is important to know what order to carry these out in, just like you would when making a piece of flat pack furniture. If you start in the wrong place, you may not end up with a correctly finished wardrobe, or correct answer. So, you will then look at the correct order to carry ou...
- 1 Addition and subtraction
- 2 Multiplication
  - 2.1 Everyday multiplication
- 3 Division
- 4 Commutative properties of multiplication and division
- 5 Exponents or powers
  - 5.1 Calculator exploration: exponents
- 6 Order of operations
- 7 Using maths in the real world
  - 7.1 Insulating the attic
    - Overall cost
    - Decision time
- 8 Problem solving strategies
- 9 This week's quiz
- 10 Summary
- Acknowledgements
- Week 2 practice quiz
- week3Week 3: Parts of the whole
- Current section:
  Introduction
  You first encountered fractions in Week 1, when you looked at how to show them on a number line and convert them to decimal numbers. This week you will continue your exploration of fractions and look at them in more detail. First, you’ll find out what a fraction is and then look at different types of fraction. Some of this may seem a little like maths for the sake of maths but much of this week’s study is to provide a solid foundation for carrying out calculations using fractions...
- 1 Fractions
  - 1.1 Folding paper
- 2 Equivalent fractions
  - 2.1 Working with equivalent fractions
- 3 Fractions of a group
  - 3.1 Thinking more about fractions
- 4 Mixed numbers
  - 4.1 Improper fractions
- 5 Fractions – bringing it all together
- 6 This week's quiz
- 7 Summary
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week 3 practice quiz
- week4Week 4: More parts of the whole
- Current section:
  Introduction
  This week you will continue to study fractions and will perform calculations with them using addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. To do this, you’ll use what you learned in Week 3 about equivalent fractions, mixed numbers and improper fractions. Fractions can often cause anxiety. Our aim is that, by working through this session, you will understand how calculations with fractions work rather than try to remember a set of rules. Understanding will make you feel much more...
- 1 Adding and subtracting fractions
  - 1.1 The process of adding and subtracting
  - 1.2 Young people and debt
- 2 Multiplying fractions
  - 2.1 Multiplying mixed numbers and fractions
  - 2.2 Practical multiplication
- 3 Introduction to dividing fractions
- 4 This week's quiz
- 5 Summary
- Acknowledgements
- Week 4 compulsory badge quiz
- week5Week 5: Relationships among numbers
- Current section:
  Introduction
  This week, you will start your study of percentages. This will continue in Week 6, when you will use percentages in a variety of different everyday situations. Whether you are shopping around for the best deal, or reading an article online, understanding percentages can be useful in your everyday life. Percentages follow on naturally from fractions, because a percentage is just a specific kind of fraction, where the denominator (the number at the bottom of the fraction) is 100. So try and ke...
- 1 Percentages
- 2 Find a percentage of a number
- 3 What percentage is it?
- 4 Facts and figures
- 5 This week's quiz
- 6 Summary
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week 5 practice quiz
- week6Week 6: Percentage calculations and ratios
- Current section:
  Introduction
  This week, you will continue your study of percentages. After a refresh of some of last week’s ideas, you will turn your attention to carrying out calculations with percentages. This will help you to feel confident in using these in different situations, such as working out a reduction in price. Finally, you’ll spend a little time learning about ratios. Again, this session contains more activities for you to carry out than in some other weeks to provide opportunities to practise...
- 1 Using percentages
- 2 Ratios
  - 2.1 Ratios in recipes
- 3 This week's quiz
- 4 Summary
- Acknowledgements
- Week 6 practice quiz
- week7Week 7: Negative numbers
- Current section:
  Introduction
  For the final two weeks of this course you are going to look at numbers that are less than zero; that is, negative numbers. You will probably be familiar with these in relation to temperatures below zero, and in banking, when any debits are made. Here you will explore the use of negative numbers and how to work with them. As well as these everyday uses of negative numbers, they are also very important in some academic study, such as science and technology. If you go on to further study havin...
- 1 Understanding negative numbers
  - 1.1 Negative numbers on a thermometer
- 2 Practical uses of negative numbers
  - 2.1 Determining if a value is positive or negative
- 3 Addition and subtraction on the number line
- 4 Adding and subtracting negative numbers
- 5 Rules for negatives
- 6 Calculator exploration: negative numbers
- 7 This week's quiz
- 8 Summary
- Acknowledgements
- Week 7 practice quiz
- week8Week 8: Sharing maths with others
- Current section:
  Introduction
  In this final week of the course you’ll complete your study of negative numbers by looking at multiplication and division, and using them effectively. You’ll finish the week by thinking about how to write and communicate maths clearly and correctly. This last section is important if you need to share your maths with other people. This could be with a work colleague, a friend (if you are working out an everyday problem) or – if you decide to undertake formally assessed study...
- 1 Multiplication and division with negative numbers
- 2 Calculator exploration: exponents with negative numbers
- 3 Wrapping up negative numbers
- 4 Reading and writing mathematics
  - 4.1 Writing mathematics
  - 4.2 Understanding a solution
- 5 This week's quiz
- 6 Summary
- Tell us what you think
- Acknowledgements
- Week 8 compulsory badge quiz

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As you work through this course you will need various resources to help you complete some of the activities.

Figure 5 Times Table File
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Activity 3 Cross-number puzzle File
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