One shilling was also known as a |
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bob , two shillings were a florin , five |
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shillings made a crown and there |
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were 21 shillings in a guinea . |
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STOP ! You are baking my brain ! Ed |
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Imagine you were going to run a |
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sweet stall at the school fete . You ’ d |
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need to buy big boxes of sweets |
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and work out how much each one |
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cost . Luckily , in pre-decimalisation |
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days , things were often sold in packs , |
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which made the maths easier , so |
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instead of a box of 100 ( which works easily with decimal currencies ), things were usually sold by the dozen ( 12 ) or the gross , which was a dozen dozen ( 12 x 12 = 144 ). All multiples of 12 , just like the number of pennies in a shilling . It made life a LOT easier !
You can see how important the 12 times table was before decimalisation , but at school , you also learned pence tables . Memorising some values would make your life a lot easier , but a lot of people just became excellent at mental maths .
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To save time , people also devised tricks
to help with calculations .
Milliner ’ s Money Madness
Let ’ s say you need to buy 82 hats at 4 shillings each . ( Why on Earth would I do that ? Ed ).
We could work out the price in long
form :
First work out the number of shillings :
82 x 4 = 328 shillings
With 20 shillings in a pound , we need to
divide by 20 :
328 ÷ 20 = 16 remainder 8 , or £ 16 8s
Or we could use a trick …
Multiply the quantity by half of the
price :
82 x 2 = 164
Then take the last digit of the answer
and double it to get the number of
shillings :
4 x 2 = 8
Then use the other digits as the pounds ,
which gives us a result of 16 pounds . So ,
the answer is £ 16 8s .
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I can see that ’ s the same answer , but it feels a bit dodgy ! Ed
What we are actually doing here
is dividing the price by two and
then dividing the answer by ten ( by
ignoring the last digit of the answer ).
When you divide by two and then
ten , it ’ s the same as dividing by
20 … which just happens to be the
number of shillings in a pound !
By doubling the last digit , you are
reversing the dividing you did at the
start . Mathematical trickery !
Multiplying by 100 is fairly simple
in the decimal system , but it won ’ t
surprise you to learn it was more
difficult with pounds , shillings and
pence ! You had to break everything
down into the smallest unit , then
convert it back into the currency
units – but of course there ’ s a handy
trick to help you ! Check out this
Awesome Activity online for another
example . There are further puzzles
for you to do too ! Aren ’ t you glad we
have decimal currency ?
Entirely !
Now , don ’ t get me
started on imperial
measurements !
AWESOME
ACTIVITIES ALERT
SCAN ME
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Words : Sarah Bearchell . Illustration : Nolan Pelletier |
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