Arithmetic Refresher (Dover Books on Mathematics)

The farther we get from our grade school days, the easier it is to forget those operations and nuances of arithmetical computation that keep recurring in our daily lives: interest and discount problems, time-payment calculations, tax problems, and so on.
This handy book is designed to streamline your methods and resharpen your calculation skills for a variety of situations. Starting with the most elementary operations, the book goes on to cover all basic topics and processes of arithmetic: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, percentage, interest, ratio and proportion, denominate numbers, averages, etc. The text continues into other useful matters, such as powers and roots, logarithms, positive and negative numbers, harmonic progression, and introductory concepts of algebra.
Entirely practical in approach and using an easy-to-follow question and answer style, this book covers a wide range of common knotty areas: filling and emptying receptacles, scales for models and maps, business and financial calculations (partial payment problems, compound interest, bank and sales discount, profit and loss problems, etc.), angle measurement, mixtures and solutions, graph and chart problems, and the like.
The discussion contains numerous alternate and short-cut methods, such as quick ways to figure compound interest; to square a number from 1 to 100; to divide by 5, 25, 125, 99, etc.; to multiply two 2-digit numbers having the same figure in the tens place; and many more. These valuable tips, together with the huge fund of exercise problems (a total of 809, half of them answered in an appendix), help you to increase your computational proficiency and speed, and make this an extremely useful volume to have on your shelf at home or at work. Anyone who has to do any figuring at all — housewife, merchant, student — will profit from this refresher. Parents will find it an excellent source of material for helping children in school work.