Everyday calculators

The small calculations that come up constantly — split a bill, count the days, convert the units.

Small sums that are surprisingly easy to get wrong

The calculations here are individually trivial and collectively the ones people most often botch, usually because a detail is hiding in the definition rather than the arithmetic. Whether a tip goes on the pre-tax or post-tax total changes the answer. Whether a date range counts both endpoints changes the answer. Whether a discount stacks multiplicatively or additively changes the answer, and stacking two 20 percent discounts gives 36 percent off rather than 40.

Each page states which convention it uses rather than leaving you to infer it from the output. Where more than one convention is genuinely in use, the choice is yours to make rather than one made silently on your behalf.

Dates and units, which hide most of the traps

Date arithmetic looks simple and is not. Leap years are not every four years — a century is a leap year only when divisible by 400, so 1900 was not and 2000 was. Months have no fixed length, so adding one month to 31 January has no single correct answer. Time zones shift by political decision, and daylight saving means some local days contain 23 or 25 hours.

Unit conversion carries its own traps. A US gallon is not an imperial gallon, a US pint is 16 fluid ounces while an imperial pint is 20, and a cup differs between US customary, US legal and metric definitions. Where a unit is ambiguous, which one is meant is stated rather than assumed.

Frequently asked questions

Should a tip be calculated before or after tax?

Convention in the United States is to tip on the pre-tax subtotal, since tax is not part of the service being tipped for. In practice many people tip on the total because it is the larger, more visible number, and on a typical bill the difference is small — around a dollar on a 60 dollar meal at 8 percent tax and a 20 percent tip. There is no rule, only a convention, so the calculator lets you choose which base to use.

Do two stacked discounts of 20 percent make 40 percent off?

No. They apply in sequence, each to the reduced price, so 100 becomes 80 and then 64 — a total of 36 percent off, not 40. Discounts multiply rather than add: 0.8 times 0.8 is 0.64. The gap grows with the size of the discounts, so two 50 percent reductions leave 25 percent of the original price rather than nothing at all.

How many business days are between two dates?

Business days exclude weekends, and usually public holidays, so the count depends on which holiday calendar applies. A span of 14 calendar days contains 10 business days when it starts on a Monday, and the answer shifts by a day or two depending on the starting weekday. Whether both endpoints are counted matters too, which is why the convention used is stated on the page rather than left implicit.

Do the date calculators handle leap years correctly?

Yes, including the century rule that catches most implementations out. A year divisible by 4 is a leap year, except that a year divisible by 100 is not, unless it is also divisible by 400. So 1900 had no 29 February and 2000 did. Ages and date spans computed here account for this, which is why an age across a leap day resolves correctly rather than drifting by a day.