Math — Fast and Faithful

Drill your number sense, keep the formulas, meet the stories

Advertisement

Maths is a muscle: quick daily drills build the number sense that makes everything else easier. Use the sprint trainer below for two minutes a day, keep the formula sheet for reference, and read the stories to see why the numbers matter. Pair with the science explainers for the physics that uses these tools.

Mental-math sprint — 60 seconds

Pick a level, press Start, and answer as many as you can before the clock runs out. Every problem is generated fresh in your browser.

The formula sheet

ThingFormula
CircleC = 2πr · A = πr²
RectanglePerimeter = 2(l + w) · Area = l × w
Triangle areaA = ½ × base × height
Pythagorasa² + b² = c² (right triangles)
Volume of a boxV = l × w × h
SphereV = ⁄₃ πr³ · A = 4πr²
Quadratic formulax = (−b ± √(b² − 4ac)) / 2a
Simple interestI = P × r × t
Percentage change(new − old) / old × 100%
Average (mean)sum of values ÷ number of values
Speedspeed = distance ÷ time
Densitydensity = mass ÷ volume

Numbers with a story

• Zero became a number in India by the 7th century — before that, "nothing" was not something you could count with.

• A shuffled deck of 52 cards has about 8×1067 possible orders — more than the seconds since the Big Bang, so your shuffle has almost certainly never happened before.

• The Babylonians knew the Pythagorean relationship over a thousand years before Pythagoras; a clay tablet (Plimpton 322, c. 1800 BC) lists correct triples.

• Every map ever drawn needs at most four colours — the Four Colour Theorem, proven with a computer in 1976.

Advertisement
Advertisement