Course Aim

Are you comfortable with the verbal and logical reasoning parts of a management recruitment assessment but struggle with the numerical reasoning component? Do you feel like you are held to ransom by technical staff who seem determined to confuse with numbers and graphs? Let us equip you with the fundamental skills required to master the numerical reasoning skills you may need in your daily management tasks (and also improve your ability to perform in recruitment assessments). In this Maths for Managers—Fundamentals course we remediate twelve years of schooling, covering the basics of numbers, fractions, decimals, percentages, exponents and roots, the basics of arithmetic and algebra, and geometry. With these concepts behind us we examine the meaning and use of numbers (data) in terms of their characteristics and frequency distributions, particularly as they are presented in daily management tasks through tables, graphs, bar charts and pie charts. We also show how, equipped with your new skills, you are much better placed to address numerical reasoning assessments. Throughout the course, we provide opportunity for some practice using a calculator as well as some basic use of Excel for calculations and graphing. There are lots of exercises throughout. No prior mathematical skills are required.

Building on this fundamental course, you may wish to consider our follow-on courses: Maths for Managers—Probability and Statistics and Maths for Managers—Basic Physics.

Course Outline

Basics. Positive and Negative Numbers | Fractions | Decimals | Percentages | Mathematical operations and inverse operations | Order of operations | Exponents and roots | Powers of ten and scientific and engineering notations | Logarithms | Summations and series | Exercises

Algebra. Basic laws of algebra | Maintaining an equality | Exercises

Geometry. Trigonometry | Conic sections (circle / ellipse / parabola / hyperbola) | Exercises

Tables and Graphs. Tables | Straight-line graphs | Other graphs | Experimental graphs | Other uses of graphs | Abuses of graphs | Logarithmic scales | Graph Exercises

The meaning of numbers. Mean | Median | Mode | Expectation | Normal distribution | Variability | Range | Variance | Standard deviation | Correlation | Exercises

Practical Tools. Using a calculator | Basic use of Excel for calculations and graphs

Numerical reasoning. A number of activities practising realistic numerical reasoning tasks

Course Material

The following resources will be provided to attendees of this course:

1. A PDF copy of the PowerPoint presentations used for the course.

2. Course notes summarising the course content.

3. A workbook and solutions to the exercises undertaken throughout the course.