Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
you can target customers who are 3.5 times more likely to buy and spend the same using a
Pay Per Click campaign, assuming your 20% percent profit margin stays constant, a 0.55
Drawing fact based conclusions is one of the most common weapons consultants use to impress
clients (and justify their fees). Let us go through this example.
Hence if a visit costs 0.55 USD there will be a new profit of 0.29 USD which is significant for a
website with thousands of daily visits.
The calculations above are quite simple, right? Anyone could do them. However, as a consultant,
you need to be able to think about the problem and perform the calculations as you speak,
in essentially no time at all.
We put together all the tricks you can possibly imagine to impress anyone with your calculation
speed. If you read these and practice using our Plain Number package, with more than 7000
calculations, no one will ever stop you.
ADDITION
It is usually better to add numbers in two steps instead of one, rounding the first to the closest
hundredth and subtracting the added number to the second. For example,
268 + 64 = (268 + 32) + (64 - 32) = 300 + 32 = 332.
In general, you can add what comes easy to you first and then add the rest, as in the following
example:
This trick may not work for everyone but it is useful to know.
When dealing with large numbers it is often easier to add a single digit at a time instead of trying
to add the whole number.
478+529
=478+500+20+9
=978+20+9
=998+9 = 1,007
When adding 5 to a number whose last digit is greater than 5, first subtract 5 and then add
10. For example:
18 + 5 = 23
18 - 5 = 13
13 + 10 = 23
When adding a long list of numbers, estimate the average of the list ( the closer the average, the
easier it gets), then just add the difference of each number and the average. Finally, simply
multiply the average by the number of addends and add the result of the previous sum. Even
though it sounds tedious and confusing, the following example shows that the method is very
efficient.
77 + 74 + 94 + 89 + 85 + 70 + 84 + 72 + 77 + 94 + 78 + 85.
Assume that the average is 80.
If we add all the differences we get
-3-6+14+9+5-10+4-8-3+14-2+5
The two 5s cancel out with the 10, -3-6 and +9 cancel out as well and we are left with
14+4-8-3+14-2=19
So
80*12=80*10+80*2
=800+160+19
960+19=979
SUBTRACTION
When subtracting 5 from a number whose last digit is less than 5, first subtract 10 and then add
5. For example:
23-5 =
=23-10 = 13
=13+5 = 18
It is usually better to subtract numbers in two steps instead of one, rounding the first to the
closest hundredth and subtracting the added number to the second. For example,
While addition and subtraction are fairly straightforward even without tricks, knowing the
following tricks can make a huge difference to your calculation speed for multiplication and
division
376×8 = 752×4
1,504*2 = 3008
When multiplying by 50, multiply by 100 and divide by 2. Use operations with 4 instead. For
example,
When multiplying a big number by a small one, multiply each digit and then add them up.
For example
743*7
=700*7+40*7+3*7
=4900+280+21 = 5201
If you are multiplying a 2 digit number by 11, just write the sum of its digits between its digits. If
the sum is greater than 10, carry the 1 over to the left. For example:
When multiplying by 9, multiply by 10 instead, and then subtract the other number. For example:
9*7
= (7-1)*(9-7+1) = 63
376/4 = 188/2 = 94
SQUARES
It is a good idea to memorise the first 25 squares. Even though it looks a lot, you know the first
10 for sure. Then 11 and 20 are easy. By practising you will soon remember the others as well:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
1 4 9 16 25 36 49 64 81 100 121 144 169 196 225 256 289 324 361 400 441 484 529 576 625
A quick and easy way to find the square of any two digits number ab is to :
add b to ab and get b+ab. Then square b and append the square to b+ab. If the square of the
number is greater than 10, carry the one over to the left. Let’s see how it works with 14.
Find 14+4=18. Then 4²=16. So appending the last digit and adding the previous one to 18 we get
196.
There is also an advanced technique to calculate squares for 26 to 50 but it is quite challenging
to do mentally. We will go through it as it could still become useful.
If A is a square between 26 and 50, Subtract 25 from A to get x. Subtract x from 25 to get, say, a.
Then A² = a² + 100x. For example, if A = 28, then x = 3 and a = 22. Hence
ANY SQUARE
In order to find any square, we need to apply another formula which is again given without proof.
To find the square of any number (a), find a number close to it whose square can be found
relatively easily(b).
Then find the difference between the two numbers (a-b) and subtract the difference from a hence
a-(b-a). Then the square of the number can be found using the following formula:
b*(a-(b-a))+(a-b)^2
PERCENTAGES
A key skill here is to be able to simplify percentages so that divisions and multiplications are
simple and easy to make. Finding percentages like 10% and 50% is trivial, so one can
approximate most percentages as multiple of 5 and find them as the sum of 10%s and 5%s. So
5% becomes 10% divided by 2, 20% is twice 10%, 25% is half of 50%, 60% is 50%+10%, 75% is
50%+25% which is half of 50%. With an afternoon of practice with these, you will be soon
become a master.
RULE #2: X% OF Y
Also, fact of the day, x% of y is the same as y% of x. That’s right weird as it seems, the two are
interchangeable. In fact x% of y is simply x/100*y, which is equivalent to y/100*x. So, how is this
useful? We can invert percentages so calculating one is easier than the other. For example 28%
of 75 becomes much easier if we look at 75% of 28, which is just 3/4 i.e. 21.
On a final note, for percentages higher than 100% simply multiply the number by the percentage
divided by 100. So 250% of 120 will simply be 120*2.5=300.