Math calculators

Solve the everyday math that comes up in school, work, and DIY — with every step shown, not just the answer.

Every step, not just the answer

An answer you cannot check is only useful once. Each calculator here shows the working — the substitution, the intermediate values, the formula that produced them — so the result can be verified, reproduced by hand, or handed in as method. That constraint shaped which calculators exist: a page that can only emit a number without being able to justify it does not earn a place here.

It also changes what the tool is for. Seeing that a percentage change of 25 percent followed by a fall of 25 percent lands at 93.75 rather than back at 100 is the sort of thing that stops being surprising once you have watched the arithmetic happen rather than been told the result.

Where exactness matters

Some of these problems have exact answers that decimals destroy. A third is not 0.333, a surd is not its rounded value, and a fraction result printed as a decimal has thrown away the very thing that made it a fraction. Where an exact form exists — a reduced fraction, a factorisation, a simplified radical — it is what gets shown, with the decimal alongside rather than instead.

The number theory pages lean on the same principle. A prime factorisation, a greatest common divisor, a least common multiple: these are exact structural facts about an integer, and they are the foundation under fraction arithmetic, modular problems and a good deal of cryptography.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a percent and a percentage point?

A percentage point is an absolute difference between two percentages; a percent is a relative one. If a rate rises from 4 percent to 5 percent, that is a rise of one percentage point, but a relative rise of 25 percent. Both statements are true and they differ by a factor of 25, which is why the distinction matters in any reporting of rates. When a source says a figure rose by 1 percent, it is often worth checking which of the two was meant.

Why does a 25 percent rise followed by a 25 percent fall not return to the start?

Because each change is applied to a different base. A rise of 25 percent takes 100 to 125. The subsequent fall of 25 percent is taken from 125, not from 100, so it removes 31.25 and lands at 93.75. Percentage changes multiply rather than add: 1.25 times 0.75 is 0.9375. Reversing a percentage rise requires a smaller percentage fall, and the gap widens as the percentages grow.

What does a z-score actually tell me?

A z-score expresses how far a value sits from the mean, measured in standard deviations. A z of 2 means the value is two standard deviations above average. Its usefulness is that it strips away the original units, so a test score and a height can be compared on the same scale. Where the underlying data is roughly normal, a z-score also maps directly onto a percentile, which is how it turns into a statement about how unusual the value is.

Why does a computer say that 0.1 plus 0.2 is not 0.3?

Because binary floating point cannot represent 0.1 or 0.2 exactly, in the same way decimal cannot represent a third exactly. Each is stored as the nearest representable value, and the tiny errors survive the addition, giving 0.30000000000000004. This is a property of the representation rather than a bug. It is also why exact arithmetic here is done on fractions and integers wherever the answer is meant to be exact.