About Time: You Improved Your Life with MathsBy Angelica Malin

By this point in your life, you have most likely developed your own way of doing things and know what suits you. While you may be comfortable doing this, it’s certainly not the best way to go. Luckily, it’s not difficult for you to streamline aspects of your life to improve it. Through the use of maths, you can easily keep track of and improve your life, turn the odds in your favour, and ensure that you can make the most of your money. Unfortunately, we’ve all read too many stories and seen too many movies where the protagonist will defy the odds to come out on top. In real life, processing quantitative information and acting on likelihood can help to avoid the element of human error entangled in going with beliefs. It helps us to make better decisions on our health, lifestyle, and choices regarding risk. This can be achieved through a few very simple mathematical practices so, don’t worry, you won’t need to consult your old maths textbooks here.

Here are just three aspects of life that can be improved with the application of a little mathematics; namely, your health, your gaming abilities, and your bank balance.

Improve your health with maths

Getting fit and healthy is key to improving your life. Regular exercise makes your body stronger and more efficient, which results in you feeling much better all of the time. But, it’s difficult to get healthy and improve your state of being without the right fuel. Every training programme, such as the BeYour12, includes exercise and nutritional aspects. The two go hand-in-hand and, while having a healthy and nutritious diet will help on its own, the advancements made through exercising are much slower without a good diet backing it up. But, it isn’t simply a case of cutting calories to get a healthier body; you need to know your nutritional needs to keep your body going. Much of these calculations are done based on your height, weight and age, with your caloric needs also being taken into account.

Thanks to the wonders of computers and the internet, you don’t need to learn all of the formulae yourself as there are plenty of websites ready to help. The nutritional needs calculator on Active can deliver the numbers for your nutritional needs and caloric needs. To help with this as well, the Verywell Fit recipe nutrition calculator can help with those foods that don’t come with a nutrition label. Simply knowing the numbers that you need to aim for will make you think differently about what food you buy and eat, helping you to achieve a healthier diet.

Improve your gaming with maths

It’s a fact that a favoured pastime of the masses is gaming. What’s more, it’s arguable that games are one of the more obvious uses of maths in our lives, whether that’s a to-hit-chance in Final Fantasy, the odds of a particular item dropping from a lootbox in Overwatch, or XCOM’s random number generator, which has killed more troops than the invading alien forces. However, while Final Fantasy buries its maths in complex gameplay, some games, like blackjack and slot machines, are based on the numbers themselves. Consequently, strategy can be important. In games of chance, there is no fate, and it’s very unlikely that, through a full sequence, each option will occur. Luckily, many have tested strategies since gambling began. Gerolamo Cardano was one of the first to spot that gambling games could be analysed mathematically. Cardano established that you have to understand where the boundaries of chance lay, and then hone in on the possible outcomes that better favour the player. Galileo and Joannes Kepler also investigated probability.

Today, we’re better equipped to hone in on strategies to gain an edge on the randomness of these games. One such strategy works on the law of large numbers and that, in small samplings, when a set amount of numbers have an even chance of occurring, around one-third will not. This is how the Pivot System was established, by backing re-occurring numbers in short series. By tracking 35 spins, the player backs a number that repeats for the next 35 spins on the roulette wheel until that number wins. Then, wait for another repeat number and go again. If the number comes in during the series, and the value of the stake stays the same in each game, the player will make a profit or break even. It’s strategies such as this that use mathematical theories to attempt to bring about a more enjoyable and profitable playing experience.

Improve your finances with maths

Money and maths go hand-in-hand: always have, always will. The only real way that you can manage your finances is through some mathematical work. If you want to put some money aside for a holiday, a new car, or even just a rainy day, you need to corral all of your incomes and expenditures and see how much you have left over. Simply doing some simple addition and subtraction in this way will give you a better view of your finances and where, perhaps, you’re spending money. Simply knowing this will make you more knowledgeable about your purchases. From there, you can dissect your monthly spending into sections like food, utilities, mortgage, subscriptions, and other. The section for other should include expenditures that you don’t need for your job or living such as that DVD that you bought impulsively at the supermarket till.

With it all organised, you can see where you can cut down your spending in areas such as other, food, and even in utilities. After this, you can see how much money you have left. Keep to this budgeting every month, and you can calculate how many months it will take you to achieve the total required to buy the new car or reach the savings goal that you’ve set for yourself.

As you can see, with maths on your side, your life can certainly be improved in areas of health, fun, and finances. Even though some areas can be a bit time-consuming, using these mathematical methods are easy and free, and the benefits can be huge.