If you’re a truck driver, strong math skills are a basic prerequisite for the job. Few people outside of the profession understand the importance of quick math in the day-to-day life of trucking, but almost every activity requires an element of calculation.
All truck drivers in the US are required by law to update their electronic logging device (ELD), providing their miles, hours, engine hours, and more. Meanwhile, truck drivers must carefully calculate their resources for the sake of conservation, which means making reliable estimates about fuel usage, tire mileage, and the rest.
If you’re looking for everyday entertainment that can also sharpen your math skills, online bingo could offer some surprising lessons. Here are the ways that online bingo requires you to put your math skills to the test.
Probability for each game
As explained by the online bingo at Paddy Power site, the ability to calculate the probability of something happening is an essential bingo skill. For example, if you have a 20-player game of bingo and each player has one bingo card, your individual chances of winning the round stand at 5%. However, in that same game, if you decide to play four bingo cards and everyone else keeps one card, your chances of winning the overall game rise to 17%. The fundamental importance of probability in each bingo game highlights how quick math skills can play an important role in any bingo strategy, while also showing how bingo can help keep your everyday math skills sharp.
Memory skills
One of the fundamental features of basic math is the ability to memorize numbers. In bingo, players often have to put their memory to the test to keep track of their own progress and remember what numbers they need in order to complete a line or achieve a full house. Even the act of tracking your numbers on the bingo card can provide some valuable math practice. This can be especially useful for truckers since so much of the daily on-the-job math requires jotting down long sequences of numeric values and keeping track of what they all mean in the bigger picture.
Stake value
Most online bingo requires you to make some kind of bet. This might be the amount that you spend on the online bingo card, or it might be the amount you stake on a game of “slingo”, which is a combination of bingo and online slots. Most online bingo games have some kind of RTP, or return-to-player value. This tells you how much a player can expect to win back over time, with the average usually being formed on the basis of playing 100 games. For example, if a slingo game has an RTP of 97%, then the player who stakes $1 per game on 100 games will win back, on average, $97 for their $100 spend. This understanding of value and probability can help players choose the right bingo games for them.
As you can see, online bingo offers some surprising everyday lessons in quick math that anyone might find useful. If you understand the value of rudimentary math skills, maybe a round of bingo is right for you.