William Petty was a clever man who lived a long time ago in a place called England. He was very smart and used his brain to learn lots of different things about the world.
One of the things that William Petty was really good at was using math to understand and solve problems. He liked to take big numbers and make them smaller so he could figure out how things worked.
William Petty was also interested in how money worked. He wanted to know how much things were worth and how much people should pay for them.
He even helped the government of England figure out how to tax people and how to spend the tax money wisely.
So even though William Petty lived a long time ago, the things he learned about math and money are still important today.