My son and I had fun this morning watching Marty Brandl’s tips, tax and discounts lesson and practicing estimation. Charlie hadn’t done much estimating before because math answers in class need to be precise. He was surprised to hear about contexts where being exact isn’t important. Too bad I can’t just estimate everything on my tax return forms!
After practicing we started looking online for more information about tipping. How did the custom originate? How does the practice differ in other regions? Are you supposed to tip barbers the same percentage as restaurant wait staff? Most of those questions were answered on the extensive Wikipedia page, but an infographic on Mint’s blog was more fun. It shows tip etiquette for a variety of countries and a lot of detail on customary tip ranges for 15 different US services. And did you know that people tip $40 billion each year in the US?!
Whether you are comparing prices with various discounts or want to quickly bust out a fair or generous tip, Marty’s lesson is a great refresher.