Math Is Fun Forum

ron

Guest

percentages

Hi
I want to know what one amount is a percentage of another

example

what is 0.74 as a percentage of 4.91

or $0.74  as a percentage of $4.91

thanks

gnitsuk

Member

Registered: 2006-02-09

Posts: 121

Re: percentages

Hi.

Think of percentages as hundreths. So "2 percent of" means "two hundreths of" or "2/100 of".

So, one hundreth of 4.91 is 0.0491.

Now however many times this goes into 0.74 is how many hundreths 0.74 is of 4.91

So, 0.74 is 0.74/0.0491 = 15.071 hundreths of 4.91 i.e. 0.74 is 15.071% of 4.91 to three decimal places.

So in general divide your total amount by 100 to get one hundreth of it and then divide this into the number you want as a percentage.

So if you want M as a percentage of N you calculate M*100/N = 100M/N

Last edited by gnitsuk (2006-10-01 21:34:04)