The Handy Math Answer Book

What do blood pressure numbersmean? Blood pressure is a measure of how much the blood presses against the walls of the arteries. ...

effective range of exercise to get cardio- vascular benefits, two measurements are often taken. The first is the maximal heart r ...

decaliter). There is also High Density Lipoprotein (HDL), the “good” cholesterol that helps keep the plaque from building up (ri ...

Blood carries oxygen to the heart, and if there is less blood (and thus, less oxygen) reaching the heart, chest pain can result. ...

and local sales tax rate stands at 5 percent; Florida has a state sales tax rate of 6 per- cent. And in various counties of New ...

How is unit priceused to determine total price? The unit price is simply the cost for each item (or unit). The term is often use ...

checks that have cleared with the listing in the register, check each off with an “X” or check mark. Also subtract any bank char ...

What are some termsto know when getting a credit card? There are several terms—many that include a bit of mathematics—one should ...

and the pledge was “dead” to the lender after the loan was repaid. For centuries, it’s been figured out using mathematics. What ...

of the loan becomes less and less. That is why the homeowner pays a great deal toward interest and not the principal for the fir ...

by astronomers of the day as zero longi- tude. The observatory is now a public museum located at the eastern edge of London. It ...

of gas in the tank, he or she could represent the total number of miles it is possible to drive based on how much gas is put int ...

418 Besides our familiar Hindu-Arabic system, numbers are expressed using different characters in such languages as Greek, Hebre ...

Topological maps also have scales, but in this case the scale is a ratio representing the measure on a map to some number of the ...

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MATH PUZZLES What is a puzzle? A puzzle is a mathematical problem that produces a solution often in the form of rear- ranging pi ...

What is a cryptarithmetic puzzle? Some of the most challenging verbal arithmetic puzzles are called cryptarith- metic puzzles. T ...

pieces include five triangles of various sizes, one square, and one parallelogram. All the shapes must be used in the final form ...

Puzzle inventor Henry Ernest Dude- ney (1857–1930) of England was instru- mental in developing many more puzzles than the crypta ...

425 RECREATIONAL MATH The Pythagorean square puzzle tests your geometry skills by asking you to take two square shapes and recon ...