omeone suggested that not all my readers are comfortable with mathematics, and so I would never reach a significant part of the constituency to which I wish to preach. ?No reader left behind? is the motto here, so let?s have a little fun with maths today, and see if we can?t help the numerically challenged.

We?ll start slowly. If you toss a coin in the air, what are the chances it will come down heads? There are several answers, all correct. Since there are two possibilities, heads and tails, the odds are even. It could go one way or the other. Expressed as a ratio, that?s 1:1 one to one. One chance you win, one chance you lose. Expressed as a percentage, and this may be the answer you gave, it?s 50:50.

So now that we?ve mastered ratios and percentages, on to advanced calculus. Just kidding. You can do this. Stick around.

Anything that can be expressed as a ratio, such as 50:50, can be expressed as odds (for gamblers, or for easier understanding), or as a percentage, or as a fraction. They?re all the same thing, just wearing different punctuation to confuse you.

For example, I?m thinking of a number between one and ten. Now you think of a number between one and 10. What are the chances we picked the same number?

Discount for a moment that I know you chose seven, because almost everyone chooses seven (and if you didn?t, smarty pants, you probably chose four). The odds are one in ten. Or, as a ratio, 1:9. Or ten percent. Or one-tenth. Here?s the math: each of us could have picked any of ten numbers. There are therefore 100 possible outcomes (your ten times each of my ten). Ten of those outcomes are a match: we both pick one, or we both pick two, or we both pick three, etc.

So the chances are ten in 100, which boils down for simplicity?s sake to one in 10. The ratio, by contrast is 10:90, or 1:9. That?s ten winners, compared to 90 losers. Ten percent is just a way of saying ?ten in 100?, but I think most people get the percentage thing, so I won?t mention it again, probably.

Try this. Bermudian law requires locals to own at least three-fifths of the shares in a company doing business in Bermuda. You may not have heard it expressed that way: you are probably more familiar with the better-known ratio, 60:40. Boil those two numbers down, and 60:40 is the same as 30:20, 15:10, or what, in its simplest terms would be known as 3:2. The ratio remains the same no matter how much bigger or smaller you make each number at the same time. As a fraction, 3:2 is three-fifths.

Here?s the point. If you get any of these, you get them all. Ratios, percentages, fractions, odds: just one giant pain in the neck, not lots of them. There?s a confidence booster. Work out how many winners and how many losers, and then pick a way of expressing the answer. The only trick is in the last part.

Some worlds demand certain conventions. Finance, for instance, pretty much uses percent. Credit cards charge percent, deposits pay percent, fees are often in percent. Companies? performance is measured in percent. It is entirely correct to say ?my credit card charges 20 percent a year?, and entirely wrong to say ?my card pays 6:5?, even though the ratio and the interest rate mean the same thing. (A banker might say: ?our credit cards pay 6:5?, but only among other bankers, and probably not even then. The ratio 6:5 is the same, if you multiply each side by 20, as 120:100, which is what the bank ends up with, compared to what it first lent you.)

In gambling, however, the odds are always expressed in ratios. Poker requires you to be able to calculate the odds of your opponent or the deck containing certain cards, and do it fast and do it right. Betting on horses or soccer games uses a ratio of its own. At the track, or in competitions such as the World Cup that started yesterday, outsiders are rated ?at long odds?, such as 500:1 or 1,000:1. The bookie is saying that, with the World Cup played every four years, a 1,000-1 outsider would only win the competition once every 4,000 years, like England for example.

In horse racing, a favourite in a big race might be at 2:1. You bet $1, and if the nag sails home first, it pays back $2 (ignoring taxes). A long shot winner might pay out 20:1, and you?d be buying the drinks if you bet $10, because you?d get back $200. (One of the inflexible rules of gambling contradicts this theory: if you have just won $200 at the racetrack, the rule is that you then bet and lose it all on the very next race.)

There?s much more, but that?s plenty for now. Unless I receive hate mail specific to this subject, we?ll do more of this occasionally.

It is fitting that we end with a story told by Tommy Cooper, one of the great comedians of all time, from the last stages of English vaudeville. He would lament at length the loss of a large amount of money he had bet earlier that day on a horse. He was particularly aggrieved at having bet on a long shot on which he had been given a tip, suggesting he had been counting his chickens.

The race was run over a mile. ?The horse started out at 20:1,? Cooper would say, sobbing into his handkerchief, ?and finished about ?alf past four.?