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Percentages (%)

When we say "Percent" we are really saying "per 100"

One percent (1%) means 1 per 100.

1 in 100

1% of this line is shaded green: it is very small isn't it?

grid 50 of 100 equals 50% 50% means 50 per 100

(50% of this box is green)

25% means 25 per 100

(25% of this box is green) grid 25 of 100 equals 25%

Examples:

grid 100 of 100 equals 100%

100% means all.

Example:

100% of 80 is 100100 × 80 = 80

grid 50 of 100 equals 50%

50% means half.

Example:

50% of 80 is 50100 × 80 = 40

grid 5 of 100 equals 5%

5% means 5/100ths.

Example:

5% of 80 is 5100 × 80 = 4

Using Percent

When 100% =

80

then:

75% = 60

Use the slider and try some different numbers

(What is 40% of 80? What is 10% of 200? What is 90% of 10?)

Because "Percent" means "per 100" think:

"this should be divided by 100"

So 75% really means 75100

And 100% is 100100 , or exactly 1 (100% of any number is just the number, unchanged)

And 200% is 200100 , or exactly 2 (200% of any number is twice the number)

A Percent can also be expressed as a Decimal or a Fraction

pie 1/2

A Half can be writen...

As a percentage:

50%

As a decimal:

0.5

As a fraction:

1/2

Read more about this at Decimals, Fractions and Percentages.

Some Worked Examples

Example: Calculate 25% of 80

25% = 25100

And 25100 × 80 = 20

So 25% of 80 is 20

Example: 15% of 200 apples are bad. How many apples are bad?

15% = 15100

And 15100 × 200 = 15 × 200100

= 15 × 2

= 30 apples

30 apples are bad

Example: if only 10 of the 200 apples are bad, what percent is that?

As a fraction, 10200 = 0.05

As a percentage it is: 10200 x 100 = 5%

5% of those apples are bad

skateboard

Example: A Skateboard is reduced 25% in price in a sale.

The old price was $120.

Find the new price.

First, find 25% of $120:

25% = 25100

And 25100 × $120 = $30

25% of $120 is $30

So the reduction is $30

Take the reduction from the original price

$120 − $30 = $90

The Price of the Skateboard in the sale is $90

Calculation Trick

This litle rule can make some calculations easier:

x% of y = y% of x

Example: 8% of 50

8% of 50 is the same as 50% of 8

And 50% of 8 is 4

So 8% of 50 is also 4

The Word

"Percent" comes from the latin Per Centum. The latin word Centum means 100, for example a Century is
100 years.

Percent vs Percentage

My Dictionary says "Percentage" is the "result obtained by multiplying a quantity by a percent". So 10

percent of 50 apples is 5 apples: the 5 apples is the percentage.

But in practice people use both words the same way.

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9
Question 10

Percentage Calculator

Percentage Difference

Percentage Points

Decimals, Fractions and Percentages

Introduction to Fractions

Introduction to Decimals

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Introduction to Percentages %See also: Percentage Calculators

The term ‘per cent’ means one out of a hundred. In mathematics percentages are used to describe parts
of a whole – the whole being made up of a hundred equal parts. The percentage symbol % is used
commonly to show that the number is a percentage, less commonly the abbreviation ‘pct’ may be used.

Percentages are used frequently in all walks of life. "30% increase in fuel prices this winter", "20% off all
shoes", "79% of people in the UK have an Internet connection", "50% extra free".
Understanding percentages is a key skill that will potentially save you time, money and make you more
employable.

The grid below has 100 cells

Each cell is equal to 1% of the whole (the red cell is 1%).

Two cells are equal to 2% (the green cells).

Five cells are equal to 5% (the blue cells).

Twenty five cells (purple cells) are equal to 25% of the whole or one quarter (¼).

Fifty cells (yellow cells) are equal to 50% of the whole or half (½).

How many unshaded (white) cells are there? What is the percentage of unshaded cells?

Finding the Percentage

There are lots of reasons why you may want to find the percentage of a number. Let's suppose that you
want to buy a new laptop computer for £500 - you have checked local suppliers and one company has
offered to give you 20% off the price. How much will the laptop cost taking into account the discount
offered?

As we have already discovered, percentages are ways of dividing the whole into 100 equal parts. The
whole can be anything, an amount of money, a length of time, your body weight - the whole is simply
the whole amount of something or 100%. In this example the whole is £500 - the cost of the laptop
before discount.

One percent of £500 is therefore £500 ÷ 100. That is £5. 1% of £500 = £5.

Once you have worked out what 1% is equal to you can multiply it by the percentage you are looking for,
in this case 20%. So £5 × 20 = £100. Therefore 20% of £500 = £100. The laptop computer will therefore
cost £500 – 20% which is £500 - £100 = £400.

The easy way to work out 1% of any number:

1% is the whole (whatever that may be) divided by 100. When we divide something by 100 we simply
move the place values two columns to the right, if you have read our 'numbers' page you will be familiar
with place values for how we write numbers. A quick recap:

£500 or just 500 is made up of 5 hundreds, no tens and no units. £500 also has no pence (cents if you are
working in dollars) so could be writen as £500.00 no tenths or hundredths.

Hundreds Tens Units Point Tenths Hundredths

5 0 0 . 0 0

When we divide by 100 we simply move our number two columns to the right. So 500 divided by 100 =
005, or 5. We don't need leading 0s so we can get rid of them.
Hundreds Tens Units Point Tenths Hundredths

0 0 5 . 0 0

This rule applies to all numbers, so £327 divided by 100 is £3.27. Which is the same as saying that £3.27
is 1% of £327. £1 divided by 100 = £0.01 one pence. There are one hundred pence in a pound (and one
hundred cents in a dollar). 1p is therefore 1% of £1.

Once you have mastered dividing by 100 to work out 1% of the whole you can use a calculator or your
memory of the multiplication tables to multiply your answer to the percentage you are looking for. (See
our page on multiplication for help).

Use our Percentage Calculators to quickly solve your percentage problems.

Working with Percentages

We calculated a 20% discount in the example above and then subtracted this from the whole to work
out how much a new laptop would cost.

As well as taking a percentage away we can also add a percentage to a number. For example: George is
promoted and with that comes a 5% pay-rise. Currently George earns £24,000 a year, how much will he
earn after his pay-rise?

As before, the first thing to do is work out 1% of the whole. The whole in this example is George's
current salary, £24,000. 1% of £24,000 is £240. We then multiply our 1% number by 5, to find 5%. £240 ×
5 = £1,200. George is going to be £1,200 a year beter off after his promotion and his new salary will be
£24,000 + £1,200 = £25,200.

Percentages as Decimals
As a percent is a fraction of a whole (the whole is always 100%) it can be writen as a decimal. To write a
percentage as a decimal simply divide it by 100. 50% becomes 0.5. 20% becomes 0.2. 1% becomes 0.01
and so on. We can calculate percentages using this knowledge. 50% is the same as a half, so 50% of 10 is
5 - as five is half of 10 (10 ÷ 2). The decimal of 50% is 0.5. So another way of finding 50% of 10 is to say
10 × 0.5 - that is 10 halves.

Therefore 20% of 50 is the same as saying 50 × 0.2. Which equals 10.

17.5% of 380 = 380 × 0.175. Which equals 66.5.

George's salary increase as above was 5% of £24,000. £24,000 × 0.05 = £1,200.

Working out Percentages of a Whole

So far we have looked at the basics of percentages, how to add or subtract a percentage from a whole.
Sometimes it is useful to be able to work out the actual percentages of a whole.

For example, let's suppose an organisation employs 9 managers, 12 administrators, 5 accountants, 3

human resource professionals, 7 cleaners and 4 catering staff. What percentage of each type of staff
does it employ?

To start to solve this problem we need to know the whole, the whole is the total number of staff in the
organisation. We can find this by adding together the different types of staff. 9 managers + 12
administrators + 5 accountants + 3 HR professionals + 7 cleaners + 4 catering staff: a total of 40 members
of staff. Our whole is therefore 40.

For each category of staff we now need to work out the percentage, the sum we need to do is:

Staff in Category ÷ Whole

(See our division page for help with division sums or use a calculator)

Starting with Managers

9 Managers ÷ 40 = 0.225 - That is an odd number, can it be right? Yes it is right but there is one more
step - to convert this number to a percentage it needs to be multiplied by 100. Multiplying by 100 is the
same as diving by a hundred except you move the numbers the other way on the place values scale. So
0.225 becomes 22.5. 22.5% of the organisations employees are Managers.

We do the same calculation for Administrators:

12 Administrators ÷ 40 = 0.3. 0.3 × 100 = 30%.

Then for 5 Accountants 5 ÷ 40 = 0.125. 0.125 × 100 = 12.5%.

3 HR Professionals ÷ 40 = 0.075. 0.075 × 100 = 7.5%.

7 Cleaners ÷ 40 = 0.175. 0.175 × 100 = 17.5%.

4 Catering staff ÷ 40 = 0.1. 0.1 × 100 = 10%.

When you have finished calculating your percentages it is a good idea to add them together to make
sure that they equal 100%. If they don't then check your calculations.

In summary we can say that the organisation is made up of:

Roles Number of Staff% of Staff

Managers 9 22.5%

Administrators 12 30%

Accountants 5 12.5%
HR Professionals 3 7.5%

Cleaners 7 17.5%

Catering 4 10%

Total 40 100%

It can be useful to show data representing a whole on a pie chart. You can quickly see the proportions of
categories of staff in the example.

Pie chart to show percenages of staff roles in an example organisation.

For more on pie charts and other types of graphs and charts see our page: Graphs and Charts.

Continue to:

Percentage Calculators

Percentage Change - Increase and Decrease

See also:

Averages (Mean, Median and Mode)

Estimation, Approximation and Rounding

Introduction to Geometry

Transferable Skills

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TOP

Easy trick to mentally calculate percentages

Situation when we need to calculate the percentages in our mind are quite common. While calculating
the VAT, Insurance premium or Tips at restaurant, we thought of percentages or perhaps if we are
earning then we would have thought about percentage of our salary we are paying for rent, food or fuel
for our vehicle. These are real life situation and we are often asked in the competitive examinations.

Basic Percentage Review

So what is the easiest way to calculate percentages? Here are some tips to quickly find percentages
mentally. Think like this:

There are some percentages that are easy to calculate mentally. 50% means half, 25% means 1/4 and
75% means 3/4 .

Finding 10% of a number is one of the most useful and also one of the easiest. To find 10% all we need to
do is move/shift the decimal one place to the left. Thus 10% of 543 = 54.3, prety simple!

1% is just as easy too. Shifting the decimal point to 2 digits left. So, 1% of 654 = 6.54

100% is the easiest by far. The number does not change. So, 100% of 765 is the number itself i.e. is 765.

50% is just the number divided by 2. So, 50% of 444 = 222.

Trick-to-mentally-calculate-percentages

How 5% works. It’s just half of 10%. Simply 2 steps in any order (1) Take 10% (2) Divide by 2. You can take
10% first or divide by 2 first, it does not mater. For example, 5% of 44 =? 10% of 44 is 4.4 and divide by 2
gives us 2.2. So, 5% of 44 = 2.2. Again, 5% of $24.80=? a) $24.80 -->> $2.48 (moving the decimal point
one place to the left) and b) $2.48 / 2 = $1.24.

15% is just 10%+5% and we already know how to solve these. So, 15% of 24 =? 10% of 24 is, well, take
the decimal to one digit left to get 2.4 and 5% is just half of 10%. So we divide 2.4 by 2 to get 1.2. So, add
them up 2.4+1.2= 3.6 which is 15% of 24.

20% of 120=? 20% is nothing but 10%+10% (breaking up into friendly parts). So, 10% of 120 is 12
(shifting the decimal one place to the left) and double of that would be 24. Again, 20% of 132=? 10%
would be 13.2 and 20% would be double of that that is 26.4

60% of 320=? 60%=50%+10%, so 50% of 320 would be 160 and 10% would be 32. So, our final answer
would be 160+32 which is 192.

75% is doing the same thing-breaking it up into friendly parts/numbers. 75% of 880=? You can break it
up by 50%+25%. 50% of 880 gives us 440. Now we need to find 25% of 880. Now, 25% is just half of 50%
and we already solved 50%, so just take half of that. 440 divided by 2 gives us 220. Now as we broke it
up, we have to put it back together. So our final answer is 440+220 =660.

95% of 2400 =? Break it up into friendly parts/numbers. So break it 2 parts- 100% and 5%. The 100% of
2400 does not change. So, 100% of 2400=2400 and 5% of 2400=? To find 5%, take 10% and then divide
by 2. 10% of 2400 is 240 and half of 240 is 120, so 5% of 2400 is 120. Now as we broke it up, we have to
put it back together. So, 100% - 5% =2400-120=2280.

110% of 140=? 110%=100%+10%, 100% is the number itself which is 140 and 10% of 140 is 14 so
140+14=154.
We can use same breaking up techniques to solve ANY percentage problem.

31% of 222=? Breaking up 31% by 10%+10%+10%+1%. Now, 10% of 222 just gives us 22.2. Because we
have 3 sets of 10%, we need to multiply 22.2 by 3 to get 66.6 (10%+10%+10% is the same as 3x10%).
Lastly we need to find 1% of 222 which gives us 2.22. So, our final answer is 66.6 +2.22 =68.82

21% of 150=? 21%=10%+10%+1%. Now 10% of 150 would be 15. So, 20% would be double of 15 that is
30 and1% of 150 would be 1.5. So final answer would be 30+1.5 which is 31.5

17% of 300=? Break 17% into 10% + 5% + 2%. Now calculate; 10% of 300 is 30, 5% of 300 is half of 10%
(i.e. 30/2= 15) and 2% (2x1% of 300 = 2x3 = 6). So it all add up to 51.

Let’s try 97% of 195. 97% is probably broken down easiest into 100%-3%. 1% of 195 =1.95. Now multiply
it by 3 to get 5.85. So our final answer is 195-5.85=189.15

98% of 250=? 98% is 100%-2%. 100% of 250 is 250 and 1% would be 2.5 (decimal will shift 2 places
towards the left). 2% would be 5. So our final answer would be 250-5 i.e. 245.

167% of 195=? One way to break it up is 100%+50%+10%+5%+2%. We know 100% of 195 is 195. 50% is
just half of 195 which is 97.5. 10% of 195 is just 19.5, 5% is 9.75, 2% of 195 is 3.9. And finally we just add
them all up to get, 195 + 97.5 + 19.5+9.75+3.9 = 325.65

There are many different ways to look at a problem. Say, 42% of 366=? 2 different ways to solve the same
problem. We can do this by taking (a) 4x10% + 2x1% or (b) we can also do it a different way by taking
50% and subtracting 8% i.e. 50% - 1%x8. Both are same, both give us the same answer. a) 4x10% +
2x1%. 10% is 36.6 and 1% is 3.66. Now, 4x36.6=146.4 and 2x3.66=7.32; adding them up is 153.72. b) 50%
- 1%x8. 50% is half of 366 which is 183 and 8% is 3.66x8 = 29.28; subtracting the two gives us 183-
29.28=153.72, the same answer as before.

62% of 420 would be 50%+10%+2% which is 210 + 42 + 8.4 = 260.4

22% of 324 would be 10%+10%+2% i.e. 32.4×2 +3.24×2 = 64.8 + 6.48 = 71.28

16% of 42 would be 10%+5%+1% i.e. 4.2 + 2.1 + 0.42 = 6.72.

a% of b = b% of a

It may not be immediately clear, but it’s true: a% of b = .01 × a × b, which is the same as b% of a (.01 × b
× a).

What’s 16% of 25? The same as 25% of 16: 4

What’s 43% of 200? Same as 200% of 43: 86.

Share

25 comments:

Anthony MichelJanuary 1, 2015 at 11:14 PM

wow, great, it was enlightening for me! thank you so much!:)

Reply

vinotha subramaniMarch 3, 2015 at 2:56 PM

Thanks very useful

Reply

Al-JEBREEN MUSAMay 7, 2015 at 8:40 PM

I think theirs a litle mistake of example 5% of 44. It should be 5% = 2.2 :-)

Reply

Replies

Mainul Maksud QuaesJune 11, 2015 at 6:54 PM

Oh! yes Musa. Thanks. Now rectified.

Reply

Rahul kumarJune 8, 2015 at 4:58 PM

Nice also provide quicker way to solve both square and square root. !!

Reply

Replies

Mainul Maksud QuaesJune 11, 2015 at 6:53 PM

Thanks, Rahul. Yes, already posted. Plz check...

Reply

AnonymousJune 21, 2015 at 1:14 PM

cool tricks... thnx a lot.

Reply

ChandanJuly 19, 2015 at 11:33 PM

Thanks Mainul for a great Post

Reply

Janu RouAugust 6, 2015 at 7:10 PM

Interesting post.

Thanks

Moving calculator

Reply

Girish GambhiraopetaOctober 2, 2015 at 4:36 PM

Thank you:) nice explanation:)

Reply

AnonymousNovember 12, 2015 at 7:37 AM

Thank you, that was great. now I can solve percentage without fear.

Reply

Ayan BanerjeeNovember 28, 2015 at 5:01 PM

How to calculate 771/4048 * 100 ???

Reply

UnknownDecember 6, 2015 at 11:30 PM

amazing article
Reply

Dianna GutierrezDecember 15, 2015 at 12:35 PM

What percentage of 1,110

Reply

RockyMarch 12, 2016 at 5:05 PM

Amazing blog. One can check the information about gate made easy online test series at Online ICE GATE
Institute.

Reply

MostlySunnyJuly 11, 2016 at 11:53 AM

Thanks for these tricks, very helpful to know how to work out problems in the real world rather than just
on a calculator.

Reply

Karan PatelAugust 6, 2016 at 3:22 PM

Thanx, it is quite helpful.

Reply

Geoffrey OnyedikachiNovember 14, 2016 at 2:11 AM

This is so helpful , I can't believe i will be able to solve Percentage Off - head from now. My gratitude to
who ever wrote this is so Inexplicable. Thanks a lot!

Reply

AnonymousDecember 23, 2016 at 1:01 PM

Thanks for sharing such wonderful nd easy methods

Reply

Pomada (Pan)February 12, 2017 at 10:39 AM

Is it just 1% that moves the decimal two times to the left?

Reply

Ankur KhareFebruary 21, 2017 at 1:51 PM

Very helpful

Reply

vrushali dindeMarch 4, 2017 at 12:07 AM

Can you suggest mental trick for

5448/5675*100

Reply
Mani MoirangthemApril 23, 2017 at 1:00 PM

ITS QUITE USEFUL....

Reply

Muhammad SohaibJuly 29, 2017 at 10:42 AM

if 60% of A is 30% of B , then B is what % of A????//

Reply

UnknownAugust 4, 2017 at 11:44 AM

Its very usefull.... thank u..�

Reply

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