Bookstores, Value Added Tax, Geography, Rounding Off and Math

 I have been doing a ton of traveling this summer.  I just got back from a two week trip to Australia and New Zealand.  Each time I go somewhere, I stumble across something new. Earlier this year, I visited Dubrovnik where I stayed in Old Town.  On the Main Street running north and south stood a bookstore called Algebra.  

The minute I saw the name, my heart went pitter pat and I was excited.  I discovered it was a bookstore with all sorts of books but it was still awesome.  I was actually on a tour of Old Town so I asked the guide if there was anything special about it but he said it was just a book store.  

From what I can tell, it is the oldest bookstore in Old Town and has been located in its current spot for 18 years.  It has a wide selection of books and other things but if you are a book person, you'll be drawn to it.  I'll admit, I just saw its name and that drew me over to check it out more.

I arrived home last night from a very long flight from New Zealand to Alaska.  Had to go from New Zealand to Australia, change planes to Los Angeles before I few to Alaska with stops in San Francisco and Anchorage.  Yes Anchorage is in Alaska but I live further north.  Anyway, Qantas has one of those maps showing where the plane is on it's trip.  As it got closer to Los Angeles, I noticed something called the Mathematicians Seamounts. Mathematicians Seamounts is a group of underwater mountains discovered off the coast of Central America in 1960. Each seamount is named after a different mathematician. The mathematicians chosen are Fourier, Gauss, LaGrange, LaPlace, Leibniz, Lobachevsky, Newton, Pascal, and Poincare.  This is such a cool discovery.

Most every single place I travel to used a Value Added Tax or VAT.  It is included in the price so what is posted on the price tag is exactly what you 'll pay.  There is no tax added at check out but the receipt you are handed shows how much tax you actually paid and the total of the items before tax because if you are a visitor, most countries will refund your tax if you fill out the appropriate paperwork upon departure.  This makes it so much easier to shop because you don't have to determine how much tax you'll need to budget for.

As I said, I visited New Zealand which has the Value Added Tax but their cash registers also do something very interesting.  So they don't have to deal with pennies, the system automatically rounds the price up or down so it ends in a zero.  For instance, if your bill is $19.98, it will round up to 20 and that is what you will be charged and expected to pay.  At first, it seemed a bit strange but then I realized it wasn't bad because I didn't acquire a ton of pennies like I do in the states, if I use cash.

This method is called the Swedish System of rounding. It is usually applied to the total bill so that if it ends in one to four cents is rounded down while if it ends in  six to nice cents is rounded up and anything ending is five is left up to the company to decide how they will handle.  Apparently, it was adopted in New Zealand back around 1990 and has allowed the country to get rid of the smaller one and five cent pieces.  It began in Sweden but has spread to a few other countries.  According to what I've read, it is for cash transactions but I've seen it used when paying by credit card so I see it being used in so many places.

New Zealand Maths has a couple of activities designed to have students practice this type of rounding.  So if you'd like to have your students practice this check the less on here and here.  It is a good way to have students practice rounding in a real life situation.  

I just had to share these odds and ends I've learned this summer.  I hope you found them interesting.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  I also realize that some of my columns got messed up on when they were published but I kept getting confused when I was trying to set up the automatic publishing.  18 to 20 hour difference can just mess you up.  Have a great week.