This is the fourth year in a row unionlearn has been getting cosy with maths. Maths Workout Week kicks off again on Monday 7 October running until Friday 11 October. The week is dedicated to encouraging everyone to think of maths as a friendly and helpful buddy in their life rather than a big scary ogre.

We want to support and inspire people to check out if their maths skills are up to date and find out what they can do to make them even better. There are a few simple reasons why this is an excellent idea:

1. Maths is an everyday thing: we all read timetables, fiddle with change in shops, compare prices of holidays online and much more.
2. Good maths skills help us to be healthier: just count those steps with your phone or compare the sugar and salt content in your food.
3. Tackling maths skills helps with managing money: what’s the cost of your mortgage again and when was the last time you took a beady eye on your payslip?
4. Your children probably have some wonderfully new and different ways of doing maths – take a look at their homework and think how you could help if you knew more.
5. World of work changes rapidly and the more refreshed skills we have the better chance we have with keeping up – how long ago was it when you left the school and thought about maths?

And besides work, learning and study for new jobs and progressing at work make demands on our maths skills.

At least you are not losing anything if you give maths a go. Therefore, if you haven’t got involved yet there are a few easy and uncomplicated things to have a go at:

• Try out unionlearn’s new Financial capability quiz in SkillCheck – it’s both fun and helpful and there’s an app to download too
• Take up a Numeracy Challenge – best improvers during October and November enter a prize draw for £100
• Talk to your union learning rep or visit a learning centre – they are there to advise and support you so that updating your maths skills doesn’t feel too terrifying
• Follow @unionlearn in Twitter and exercise your brain with our daily maths quiz
• Read some of unionlearn’s inspiring case studies and see that you are not alone – others have tackled maths and won!