A percentage is something which is used in common day-to-day lives. This is one of the subheading of arithmetic that is used in almost all the sectors, including markets, interest rates, statistics, etc. A percentage is a way to express a number as a part of whole. Percent basically means ?for every 100? or ?out of 100?. A percent is just a way to write a fraction with a denominator as 100. For an example, if out of 100 days, it rained for 30 days, we say that it rained 30 percent of the time. The percentage is denoted by the symbol ?%?. Another example would be, if we consider 10 days as 100% and two days were holidays, we say that, 20% of the time was holiday and 80% was not.
There are certain methods to calculate a percentage-
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If a decimal entity is given, simply shift the decimal point two places to the right.
For example- if you have to calculate percent of 0.456, then shifting the point two places to right will give, 45.6%.
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If the digit is given as 0.4, then shifting the decimal point two places to right will give 40%.
Similarly, even percentages can be written as decimal form by shifting putting decimal points two places towards the left.
For example, if an entity is given as 93.7%, then its decimal value will be 0.937.
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If a fraction is given, then it can be converted to percentage by multiplying the fraction with 100.
For example, if a fraction is given as 1/2, then its percentage would be 1/2×100 i.e. 50%.
Coming to the most basic method of calculating percentage. This method is used when the whole entity is given and also a value is given which is required to be turned into percentage.
- The first step is to know or calculate the value of whole.
- The second step is to find out the value what you want to turn into percentage.
- The third step is to convert these two values into one value by transforming them to fraction.
This is done by putting the required value in numerator and the whole value in denominator. And then simply multiplying it with 100.
For example, if there are 450 black pebbles and 320 white pebbles and you have to find out the percentage of white pebbles in the mixture, then the first step would be finding out the total number of pebbles by adding the two. The total comes out to be 770. Since, the required percentage is the percent of white pebbles then 320 will be put in the numerator and 770, which is the total will be put in denominator i.e. 320/770. Multiplying this fraction with 100, we get 41.5%, which is the required percentage.
If you are using a calculator, there are two ways of calculating percentage:
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If the calculator has % button-
This is the easiest way of calculating percentage, if you want to calculate 50 percent of 20, then press the button 50 % * 20 and the answer is 10.
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If the calculator doesn’t have a % button-
If the calculator doesn’t have a % button, then convert the percent value into decimal form by adding a decimal two places to the left. For example, if you want to calculate 50% of 20, then the decimal form of 50% is 0.5
And after converting it to decimal form, multiply it with the whole number i.e. 0.5*20 which equals 10.
These are some of the ways of calculating percentages. These methods can be used in a number of mathematical platforms like sorting something out, calculating profit and gain, calculating the discount when shopping, etc.
