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| Maths teacher's formula for splitting bills |
| November 05 2009 at 09:27AM |
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A maths teacher's solution to splitting restaurant bills has become a YouTube hit. "I particularly want people who didn't really like maths at secondary school, who were put off, to think they probably shouldn't base their opinion of maths on when they were 14 "I went for topics which people are familiar with as being a problem. Whenever I go to a restaurant, it always comes down to me to sort the bill out but I thought, "no, we can do this"." To solve the conundrum he came up with the idea of a "standard meal unit" - one meal and two drinks. Someone who drank heavily would owe for 1.4 units, while a diner who just had a salad would pay for 0.6 units. The group splits the bill according to how many units each of them owes. Mr Parker, who is based in London, also concluded that a couple should not pay the same rent as a single flatmate. Instead of dividing the cost solely according to the number of bedrooms, he proposes taking account of the number of people sharing the whole flat. "The feedback so far has been mostly about the restaurant situation," he said. "People like the standard units. It was meant to be a slightly silly way of looking at it but the logic is very sound. I would be very keen to know if it solves arguments." Mr Parker, who grew up in Perth, Australia, studied maths and physics before training to be a teacher. He is based at Queen Mary College, University of London, and works in schools across the capital for the More Maths Grads programme, which tries to get pupils interested in studying the subject. To make his YouTube films he worked with the Training and development Agency for Schools. He said he hoped the videos would attract people to his profession. "A good maths teacher brings the real world into the school and shows class 9G how to use numbers to make their lives easier. You have to be very creative and think on your feet." FLAT RATES FOR FLAT MATES It's not fair for a single tenant living with two couples to pay a third of the rent, says Mr Parker, who suggests dividing rent into two parts - the first to cover the bedrooms, the second to cover communal space. The cost of the bedrooms should be split three ways. But the cost of the communal areas should be split by the number of people in the flat - five ways. So the single person would pay 50 per cent divided by three for the bedrooms, which equals 16 percent of the total rent, plus 50 per cent divided by five for the communal space, which comes to 10 percent - a total of 26 per cent. PLANE FACTS Are budget airlines really a better deal than scheduled carriers? Mr Parker's formula takes into account the cost of checking in bags and buying food on a budget flight: ((n-1) x 12) + (h x 10) > a-b n is the number of bags you are taking. h is the number of hours on the plane. a-b is the price of the regular flight minus the price of the budget flight. Using the formula, multiply the number of your bags - minus the one you take on free - by the cost per bag, estimated at ?12: ((n-1) x 12). Then multiply the hours you spend on the plane by ?10: (h x 10). If the figure you end up with is greater than a - b then you're better off with BA than Ryanair. - Daily Mail
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