Lots of us are fuzzy about numbers but shouldn't be.

If you're old enough to remember the TV show The Sixty Four Thousand Dollar Question, you know that a contestant had made it through preliminary rounds to reach that point when he or she, in a booth (maybe with an expert), had to answer a really hard question that would earn him or her that much money, which, at the time, was probably like a million dollars today.

That show is long gone -- the highlight (to me) being Dr. Joyce Brothers as an expert on, of all things, boxing --but The $64,000 Question has become part of our vernacular. It's applied to small deals and big ones alike. The numbers change, but the basic principle applies: You bet everything you have to get lots more. I recently heard a high-level government person refer to "The Billion Dollar Question."

You can substitute your own amount: the concept is what counts.

So how much, really, is $64,000? This is a simple math question, not related to inflation, etc.

(And all you smirky math whizzes can check out for now. This isn't for you.)

Break it down. Sixty four thousand (64,000) is sixty four (64) times one thousand (1000), right? That means that if you'd won the big prize on that show, and they'd agreed to pay you weekly, you might have gotten a thousand dollars ($1000) a week for a year, and you would still have twelve (12) weeks left over!

Are you with me? Most are, but not all. Why not? Because some of us don't know that there are fifty two weeks in a year, much less how to calculate a pay-out based on that amount. If you remember that old kid refrain -- "Thirty days has September, April, May, and November" -- then you know that there are four weeks in every month except those four, which have an extra day, which means add four to the forty eight (48) weeks and you get fifty two (52) weeks.

If your head is reeling, you didn't get enough basic math when you were in school. This is actually a pretty easy problem. It gets harder when you're a grown-up trying to figure out square footage on a house you might want to buy. What is a square foot? And what if it's nine dollars and fifty cents ($9.50) per square foot? How can you possibly figure out what that house should cost?

Well, of course you get out your calculator. A device that transformed consumer finance decades ago, it's still useful for those of us who aren't good at math. But you still have to know something about math just to be able to enter the figures into the calculator. Adding and subtracting and dividing and multiplying. Do you understand what those words mean?

Our school systems don't always teach us the math we need to know to make sense of our world. Being a high school graduate should certify that we understand numbers and what they represent and how they function in our lives and how they can make us rich or ruin us. How they can make life easier or harder.


Here's another example. Get ready.

Let's assume you want to see a movie at a certain time. The movie starts at 7:15. It's 5:30 at your house. How much time, from right now, do you have to get there? Quick! Do the calculation. Did you? Could you?

If not, let's break it down. It's 5:30 right now, so that means it's a half-hour (30 minutes) until six o'clock (6:00). Then it's another hour until seven (1:00). And another fifteen minutes after that until the movie starts.

So go back and add all that up: 30 minutes plus 60 minutes (an hour) and 15 minutes. Can you do the math? 30+60+15=105. That's how many minutes you have to get to the movie - minus parking and seat-picking time, which may take another fifteen (15) or twenty (20) minutes. So you have to subtract that time from your total of 105 minutes, right?

You come up with 105-20=85. That's how minutes you really have, from right now, to get to the movie theatre. So how much is 85 minutes? Well, I think most of us know that there are 60 minutes in an hour (just as there are sixty/60 seconds in a minute, which I hope you knew). So if you subtract 60 from 85, you get 25. Twenty-five. That's how many minutes more than an hour that you have. You have an hour and twenty-five minutes. (1:25) Get moving!

Try one more. Let's say you order a pizza and the guy delivers it and you want to give him a fifteen percent tip. The pizza costs -- to make it easy -- fifteen dollars ($15). What is fifteen percent of that?

If you suddenly blanked, don't be ashamed. But vow to do better.

The bill for the pizza -- and this formula applies to any bill in any restaurant -- is fifteen dollars ($15), so you could multiply 15 (percent) times 15 (dollars), but only if you remember, from your math classes, how to do that.

Or you could take a short cut and say that ten percent (10%) of $15 is $1.50 (a dollar-fifty), and another five percent (5%) is half that, or .75 (seventy-five cents). If I add 1.50 and .75, I come up with 2.25. That's the tip I'll give the waiter or waitress.

So if my bill was $15 for the pizza, and I add a fifteen per cent (15%) tip, or $2.25, my total is -- what?

To recap: I'm paying $15 for a pizza and another $2.25 for a tip, so my total is $17.25. That's the amount that I agree to pay. That's what I sign my name to on the credit card receipt.

But there is another reason to care about numbers, beyond the rational and practical. They rule our universe. The smartest scientists -- the physicists and astronomers -- live and learn by numbers. How fast something can go, what the rate of speed is, the distance between stars they can't even see, etc. It's all numbers. People who design our space vehicles live in a world of numbers most of us are totally unaware of.

Occasionally a physicist -- a Stephen Hawking or an Einstein -- will try to explain what they know to the rest of us, but it almost always goes way over our heads. (Einstein famously said that he was bad at math, but I don't think he was comparing himself to me.)

You can get through your life being sort of stupid about numbers -- if you're rich and have servants, or are not so rich but have friends, who constantly, and patiently, remind you of your obligations -- but it's easier if you just school yourself in the basics.

Numbers are crucial to our existence and our understanding of our existence. By the way, numbers can be expressed either as numerals or letters. It's as legitimate to say 75 as it is to say seventy-five. Isn't that interesting? I think so.

Math is just playing with numbers, adding them up and subtracting them, etc. (I'm not talking about "higher" math, which most of us don't need or want to know about.) Start thinking about numbers. Simple numbers. Count things in your life. It's not hard. But it's important. It's important for your bank account, so you don't run out of money and not know it. It's important in shopping, so you don't spend more than you need to or can. It's important when you have to measure ingredients for a special dish you're cooking. Numbers tell you how tall your kid is, how much money you make.

Quick now:

How many teaspoons in a tablespoon?

How many ounces in a pound?

How many pints in a quart?

How many milliliters in a liter?

How many pounds in a ton?

How far, within 10,000 miles, to the moon?

How far, within 10,000,000 miles, to the sun?

How many feet in a mile?


Give up? If so, join the crowd. Most of us have only a rudimentary understanding of how numbers and mathematical equations underlie our lives, of what numbers really mean to us.

Woody Allen once said, more or less, that success in life consisted of (1) 80 percent showing up, (2) 90 percent showing up, (3) some other percent. Do you recall his actual number? Neither do I. But what he meant was that just showing up, being there when we're supposed to, is a big part of our success, in life and love and career. The number is inconsequential. It's the concept that counts.

When did Columbus sail over "the oceans blue" to discover The New World? Do you know the year? More importantly, was it 100 years ago or 500 years ago or 1000 years ago?

And why does it matter?

Because a hundred years ago Florida was already awash in development, while a thousand years ago no white people even knew it existed. You don't need to know that Columbus sailed the sea in 1492 -- you just need to know that it was about 500 years ago. Not a hundred or a thousand.
Got it? Get the concept of numbers, and the specifics, if they're necessary, will come easier.

There used to be a high school course called Consumer Math. It was intended to teach those of us not fast-tracked into business or physics or engineering all we needed to know about math and how it functioned in our real lives. Buying a house, getting a loan, managing our finances, etc.
Academically, it was ranked alongside Home Ec. But I'm willing to bet that the students who took those courses probably remember more from them than from all their history and science and English classes put together.

I think it's time to bring back Consumer Math. Give it a snappier name. Math for Life! Or How Numbers Can Make You Hotter!

When it comes to the eduation of our kids, I think we need to understand and admit that lots of them aren't going to college and need just a thorough understanding of numbers to find and keep a good job. It would be great if they had verbal skills, too -- through writing and Public Speaking classes -- but that's another topic for another time (and maybe wishful thinking).

Acquaint your kids with numbers early on. And re-acquaint yourself. It's never too late!