To multiply two numbers by hand takes a few steps but it's something we're taught in school. When dealing with big numbers, really big numbers, we need to a quicker way to do things.

Mr and Mrs Sharma can’t work out how many sausages to buy for a party, so they try to count using chocolate buttons, but are getting into a right mess! Relevant for teaching Maths at KS1 and KS2 ...

Multiplication Boy helps Mr Sharma buy pencils for the school, using arrays to multiply. Relevant for teaching Maths at KS1 and KS2 in England and Wales, and First and Second Level in Scotland.

The way you learned to multiply works, but computers employ a faster algorithm.