Multiplication is used in many daily applications ranging from the simple to the very complex.
A simpler concept of multiplication can be demonstrated with a trip to the grocery store.
If a shopper wished to have two oranges everyday, a small amount of multiplication would help in determining how many oranges to buy: 2×7=14, the shopper would want to purchase fourteen oranges.
The oranges are then priced by the pound, which leads to another great example of how multiplication is used in the grocery store.
The grocery store sells the oranges for fifty cents per pound and the total weight of the oranges is four pounds; in the equation .50×4=2 we find two dollars is the total cost of the oranges.
A sale advertising twenty percent off a loaf of bread is noticed further into the shopping trip.
A little multiplication is needed to figure the new cost of the bread on sale, where the original cost of the bread is $4.00 and 4×20% or 4x.20=.80, 4-.80=3.20.
Once all the items at the grocery store are collected, a shopper uses multiplication one last time to figure out the total cost of all groceries with sales tax.
To determine the true total of the grocery store purchases, the shopper would need to use multiplication to factor the total groceries times the sales tax; if sales tax is 8% and the groceries total $25.00, then 25×8% or 25x.08=2, determines the total cost of groceries as $27.00.
