I've often heard people say that the most effective angle to park at is a 45 degree angle. To get an idea of this angle, I hold my right or left hand out straight ahead and point my other hand out toward the curb I'm parking next to. So I form a right angle. Then I try to visualize half of the angle formed with my arms. When my front bumper hits the 45 degree angle, I start to straighten the wheels. If you can master this, half of a right angled turn, then you won't be the person who repeatedly readjusts your car for 10 minutes while holding up the traffic on the street. Now that I've started to drive, I need to remember that because I won't always be able to park in a parking spot straight ahead of me.

I also want to practice my percentages with the bill that comes at the end of dinner. My father always tries to leave a tip and so I enjoy being a conversion factor calculator. I would like to help my dad out more, especially when the amount of the bill from dinner comes to a total of a very odd number. For example, the other day our bill amount for 3 people came to $63.4 (or something close to it) and my dad wanted to give a 15% tip. The tip amount came out to about $9.56. The formula is: tip amount = bill total x tip percent. It might have been because it was late, and the restaurant was noisy, but it took me a long and tedious time to figure out the percent tip in dollars. Or maybe those are just my poor excuses.

I would love to become faster at converting percentages and other numbers in my head. Since I'm studying geometry, I would like to be able to visualize angles in my head with precision.