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Succeed with maths – Part 2

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Following on from Succeed with maths - Part 1, this free badged course will continue to develop your mathematical knowledge and skills using everyday examples. The course will guide you through measurement, scientific notation (based upon powers of 10) and roots of numbers, shapes and how to calculate their properties before finally turning to how to construct and read from tables, charts and graphs. It provides a solid foundation for you to continue with studies in any subject which requires some degree of mathematical knowledge.

Transcript

Succeed with maths - Part 2 is a free course which lasts about 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 can also take as long as you want to complete it.

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're 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:

understand the SI and imperial systems of measurement
understand and use scientific notation in different situations
describe and calculate the basic properties of circles, four-sided shapes and triangles
understand some different ways of representing and analysing data.

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: 23/09/2014

Updated: 09/01/2020

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Course content

- Introduction and guidance
- Current section:
  Introduction and guidance
  Succeed with maths – Part 2 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 looking at different units of measurement for length and how to convert between these, before moving onto the same for volume and mass (known as weight in everyday language). In following we...
  - What is a badged course?
  - How to get a badge
- Acknowledgements
- week1Week 1: Measurement of length
- Current section:
  Introduction
  Welcome to the first week of Succeed with maths – Part 2. The first two weeks of this course will focus on measurement and the units that are used to communicate this.People use numbers to solve a wide variety of different problems, including when designing buildings, navigating and working out the fuel consumption of an aircraft. These examples all use measurements that involve distance and it is these types of situations this week will be concentrating on. For this, it is important t...
- 1 Using units of measurement
- 2 The International System (SI)
- 3 Length: SI units
  - 3.1 Converting between SI units and length
- 4 Length: imperial measurements
- 5 Relating the SI and imperial systems of measurement
  - 5.1 Converting between different unit systems
- 6 Home improvement project
- 7 This week's quiz
- 8 Summary
- Acknowledgements
- Week 1 practice quiz
- week2Week 2: Measurement of mass and volume
- Current section:
  Introduction
  This week follows on from Week 1, which looked at measurement of length in both the International System (SI) and imperial, to consider two other common measurements: mass and volume. As well as learning about the units for these measurements in both systems, you’ll get much more practice in converting between units. Conversions can often be a challenge, so the more practice you get with this the better!Watch Maria introduce Week 2:After this week’s study, you should be able to:u...
- 1 Using units of measurement
- 2 Mass
- 3 Volume
  - 3.1 Volume: the imperial units
  - 3.2 Relating the two systems: volume
- 4 Less familiar units
- 5 This week's quiz
- 6 Summary
- Acknowledgements
- Week 2 practice quiz
- week3Week 3: Everyday patterns and formulas
- Current section:
  Introduction
  Patterns occur everywhere in art, nature, science and especially mathematics. Being able to recognise, describe and use these patterns is an important skill to have when tackling a variety of different problems and in understanding the world, for example, predicting the effect on fish numbers for a given amount harvested from the sea. This course explores some of these patterns, ranging from ancient number patterns to the latest mathematical research. It also looks at useful practical applic...
- 1 Exploring patterns and processes
  - 1.1 Pascal’s triangle
  - 1.2 Pascal’s triangle – a closer look
- 2 Looking for relationships
  - 2.1 Finding a word formula
- 3 Real-life examples of using formulas
- 4 Tips for using a formula
- 5 This week's quiz
- 6 Summary
- Acknowledgements
- Week 3 practice quiz
- week4Week 4: Working with patterns and formulas
- Current section:
  Introduction
  You finished last week by using some word formulas from different aspects of everyday life. Some of these examples will not have been relevant for some people (not everyone is an archaeologist!) but they should still have all given you some great practice at using different formulas. This week the course turns to writing your own word formula. You’ll start by looking at spreadsheets and then do some number tricks to amaze your friends and family with. Finally, you’ll use doing an...
- 1 Your formulas: using a spreadsheet
  - 1.1 Finding the balance
  - 1.2 Spreadsheet formulas
- 2 Your own formulas
  - 2.1 Understanding the number trick
  - 2.2 Another number trick
- 3 Doing and undoing
  - 3.1 Doing some doing and undoing
- 4 Rearranging formulas
  - 4.1 Time formula
- 5 Inequalities: greater than or less than?
- 6 This week's quiz
- 7 Summary
- Acknowledgements
- Week 4 compulsory badge quiz
- week5Week 5: More power
- Current section:
  Introduction
  This week extends your study of exponents, or powers (Succeed with maths – Part 1 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] provides an introduction to this). You’ll consider how to use these to write large and small numbers to make them easier to understand, write and work with. To do this, a system called scientific notation is used, based on different powers of ten, which allows small and large numbers to be written using fewer digits. Once such nu...
- 1 Big and small
  - 1.1 Powers of 10
- 2 Scientific notation and large numbers
- 3 Roots
  - 3.1 Square roots in power notation
  - 3.2 Square roots of negative numbers
- 4 This week's quiz
- 5 Summary
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week 5 practice quiz
- week6Week 6: Shapes around us
- Current section:
  Introduction
  The study of shapes is fundamental to understanding the world that people see around them. Being able to define the properties of both two dimensional shapes, such as triangles, and solid shapes, such as cylinders, enables engineers and designers to build bridges and design new products. Here you’ll begin this area of study by concentrating on basic four-sided shapes, triangles and circles, as well as some solid shapes and how to calculate some of the basic properties of these, such as...
- 1 Geometry
- 2 Perimeters
- 3 Areas
- 4 Volumes
  - 4.1 Volume formulas
- 5 This week's quiz
- 6 Summary
- Acknowledgements
- Week 6 practice quiz
- week7Week 7: Working with data
- Current section:
  Introduction
  More and more in every aspect of our lives, data – information, numbers, words or images – are collected, recorded, analysed, interpreted and used. For example, every time you go shopping, if you use a loyalty card, the store will be collecting details of what you purchased to help them to provide you with a better service and keep your custom. Information is also encountered in the form of statistics: everything from graphs of the latest house sales figures to census results, th...
- 1 Averages
- 2 Measuring the spread of a data set
- 3 More about data
- 4 Tables
- 5 This week's quiz
- 6 Summary
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week 7 practice quiz
- week8Week 8: Communicating with data
- Current section:
  Introduction
  At the end of last week you looked at one way of communicating with data, the use of tables. This week this theme will be continued by taking a look at graphs and charts. These give us a means of displaying data visually, and as the saying goes, ‘a picture paints a thousand words’! So, graphs and charts can be a very useful way of presenting data clearly and at the same time showing any possible patterns. You’ll be considering how to present and interpret graphs and charts,...
- 1 Graphs and charts
- 2 Line graphs
- 3 Bar charts
- 4 Pie charts
- 5 Reading a graph with caution
- 6 This week's quiz
- 7 Summary
- Tell us what you think
- References
- Acknowledgements

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Succeed with maths – Part 2

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