No matter if you like it or not, you are surrounded by numbers pretty much everywhere. Moreover, you know of many people who make careers in Maths. However, some surprising jobs expect you to be good with numbers.
You rarely think about such scenarios, at least not when you relax at a salon, right?
What if we tell you that when you relax at a salon, and a hairdresser works on making you look better, he calculates his next step mathematically behind his friendly face.
Shocked? Well, it’s not just about having an eye for styles and mastering the art of scissors. Here, we are not talking about managing money either.
Mirror, UK spoke to a Bristol, England-based hairdresser, Emma Claire Beresford, about the involvement of maths in her job.
Emma told: “There’s plenty of ways you use mathematics within hairdressing, for me personally I use angles and ratios in every single haircut and colour I do.
“I’m so glad I listened in school as it’s helped my hairdressing knowledge progress quicker and also helps with diluting oxidants and making the perfect tone for my customers’ new fresh look down to the finest detail.”
As per the National Hair & Beauty Federation’s VP, Amanda Lodge-Stewart, “Maths is an essential skill for a hairdresser.”
“It’s more than just the arithmetic to calculate the total price of a service, add up your takings for the week and subtract the costs of products used to work out if you’ve made a profit.
“As a stylist, you need to understand angles, which will determine the weight of the cut, measurement so that you cut to the length the client requests and understand the right tool to use for shorter cuts, fades or shades, as well as symmetry to ensure balance in the finished hairstyle.
“For colour services, you need to understand weight, ratios and percentages to ensure you use the correct quantities to get the desired effect and to calculate the time it will take to apply the colour and allow it to develop.
“You also need to work out the time so you can tell the client when the treatment will be finished and ideally whether you can fit in another client in between.
“Salon owners use statistics to understand which days and times are busiest to organise their staff rotas, which services are more popular, and to compare the effectiveness of their individual team members.
“Many of our trainees come to us with a poor sense of their own abilities in maths, having struggled at school. We show them why maths is relevant and important in hairdressing so that we can get them to the GCSE standard within a year of starting with us.”
So, hairdressing is another job that expects you to be good with numbers.