
You can also divide by three and multiply by five: 90 ÷ 3 = 30 x 5 = 150. Express that as 15.0 and move the decimal point one place right and arrive at 150. This is why British and American soldiers stationed in Germany were taught an 'on manoeuvres' converter: divide the miles by six and move the decimal point one point to the right. AdvertisementĪs an alternative, let's think about about a kilometre equalling (roughly) six tenths of a mile. So that 18 could be halved to nine and we all remember, don't we, that nine eights are 72. One way to solve it is to reduce the principal number to something that appears in the eight times table then convert it back. So, yes, of course it works but there's a problem While dividing by five is easy enough (divide by ten and double it), multiplying by eight is trickier. What about going the other way, for the European traveller trying to convert those weird miles into nice neat kilometres? Well, the obvious way is to divide by five and then multiply by eight.

Then take a quarter of your half, 18, and just add the two together. You take the kilometre number, 144, and halve it 72. What I can do is to remember that, more sensibly, five miles equals eight kilometres and to use a trick an uncle taught me on an early drive through France. The standard 'converter' approach applied to the common problem of turning, say, 144 kilometres into miles would require you to remember that one km equals 0.62137119 miles and being able to multiply that by 144 in your head.
SWIFT HANDY CALCULATOR VALUE HOW TO
We'll take you through some tips for how to manually calculate the figures in your head, plus we'll give you a converter so that you can check your answers.

Today we're going to take a look at how to convert between kilometers and miles, and back again. By Nick Valentine | Last update: 07 August 2019
