A mathematics hack showing a method to make percentage calculations much easier has wowed social media users.
A video of the trick was posted onto the Facebook page Mathematics Tutorial, showing a tutor breaking down a series of problems for viewers. It has received a rave reaction online with many calling it “brilliant”.
The footage, which was posted on September 2, has already been watched more than 11 million times and received more than 214,000 likes.
The video has two parts, with the first including five problems. Here, followers were shown a nifty shortcut to help calculate the percentage of numbers in the 10s much easier.
You simply take the first number in the percentage figure, so for example it would be 2 if it the number was 20, and multiply it by the first number of the other figure.
For example if the question is: What is 20 per cent of 30?
You would calculate it as 2x3=6. Voila!
Here’s another example. What is 40 per cent of 80?
The answer is 4x8=32.
For those wanting to calculate number that aren’t round, commenters on the post suggested they could try using decimals. For example, one commenter worked out that to calculate 50 per cent of 99 it would be 5x9.9=49.5.
The second part of the video displays some advice for the laws of exponent – the multiplication and division rules that help to solve the problems easily.
The poster of the video, who is based in Kidapawan, Philippines, has more than 1.9 million followers on Facebook and his tricks are rapidly gaining more attention worldwide.
Many commenters loved the hack, saying it has made their life easier and they wished they had known about it when they were in school.
“That’s brilliant,” one person wrote. “I wish I had known this years ago”.
While another said: “Why wasn’t I taught this way at school where maths terrified me. It’s all so logical.”
A third wrote: “OMG if only my maths teacher taught me this instead of shouting at me in front of the whole class”.
Some were baffled: “Would have been nice to see this about 40 years ago when I was struggling in math. Why didn’t they teach us this easy way?”
And mostly very thankful. “That’s a much easier way of doing it. Thank you for sharing.”
Others called it “amazing”, “cool”, “interesting” and “simple”.
