How Do You Calculate A Percentage And Solve Percent Problems?
Percentages are very confusing to many students, yet they come up very frequently, and are a very important topic in math. This article show you the steps for working with two common forms of percent problems. First, it is essential that you understand what a percent is. The word percent means “out of 100.” The % symbol simply means just that. To make something out of 100, we just divide it by 100. Stated another way, we make it into a fraction with a denominator of 100. For example 57% equals 57/100. Whenever you see the % symbol, just take whatever is to the left of it and put it over 100 without thinking. For example, 8% equals 8/100, 200% equals 200/100, and 1.7% = 1.7/100. In each of these cases we would then take action to reduce or simplify these fractions, but nonetheless the % symbol still tells us to put the number over 100. With that said, here is a typical question: What percent of 57 is 39? The question could also be phrased equivalently as “39 is what percent of 57?” As a
