Video · + 1 min read

(Video) What Percent is It?

by Math Antics

Here's another mathantics video that explains how to calculate percentage given two numbers.

Summary\large{\text{Summary}}

Before, we learned how to find a percent of a number. For example: 25% of 2025\%\text{ of }20 But there are other types of percent problems we could be asked like finding out what percent 1010 is of 5050.

To help us, we're going to use the following equation to solve any percent problem we come across. PartTotal=Percent%\frac{\text{Part}}{\text{Total}}=\text{Percent}\% For example, to find 25%25\% of 2020 we would set Percent=25\text{Percent}=25 and Total=20\text{Total}=20. Part20=25%Part=25%×20Part=5\begin{align} \frac{\text{Part}}{20}&=25\%\\ \text{Part}&=25\%\times20\\ \text{Part}&=5 \end{align}

The trick was to multiply both sides to the equation by 2020. This left the variable "Part" by itself on the left side.

Types of Problems

There are three kinds of percent problems, ones where the Part\text{Part} is missing, ones where the Total\text{Total} is missing, and ones where the Percent\text{Percent} is missing.

  • What is 25% of 20?{\color{#29A603}{\text{What}}}\text{ is }25\%\text{ of }20\text{?}
  • 5 is what% of 20?5\text{ is }{\color{#29A603}{\text{what}}}\%\text{ of }20\text{?}
  • 5 is 25% of what?5\text{ is }25\%\text{ of }{\color{#29A603}{\text{what}}}\text{?}

Finding the Percent

So, to find the percent, we just plug in the Part\text{Part} and the Total\text{Total} into our equation.

Let's look at an example.

You visit 3535 of the 5050 U.S. states. What percent have you visited?

In this example, Part=35\text{Part}=35 and Total=50\text{Total}=50. Plugging these into our equation, we get: 3550=Percent%3550=Percent1003550× 2× 2=Percent10070100=Percent10070=Percent\begin{align} \frac{35}{50}&=\text{Percent}\%\\ \frac{35}{50}&=\frac{\text{Percent}}{100}\\ \frac{35}{50}\frac{\times\,2}{\times\,2}&=\frac{\text{Percent}}{100}\\ \frac{70}{100}&=\frac{\text{Percent}}{100}\\ 70&=\text{Percent} \end{align}

Test Yourself: 1313 is what percent of 6565?

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Put ideas together

Contest problems often need this idea together with one or two others. That is where understanding goes deeper than memory. These are real problems from the AMC 8, AMC 10, AMC 12 and AIME, the national math competitions for middle and high school students, each with a worked solution on LIVE by Po-Shen Loh.

Interactive · 1 question

Percent of a Number

Let's say you want to find a%a\% of a number x.x.

Percent of a Number: a% of x = a/100 times x/1. Example: 20% of 40 =20/100 times 40/1 = (20 times 40)/(100 times 1) = 800/100 = 8

Image by Caroline Kulczycky

Let's do another example.

What is 35%35\% of 90?90?

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Interactive · 3 questions

Multiply the number by x100\frac{x}{100}

First off: in this explanation, xx is a variable, which means you can replace it with whichever number you need to answer a question. When you say xx percent of something, you're basically saying x100\frac{x}{100} of that thing.

Real quick: what percent is 23100\frac{23}{100}?

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Video

(Videos) The Percent Proportion

by mathman1024

Here's a video by mathman1024 that shows you how to solve percentage problems using proportions.

Summary\large{\text{Summary}}

The main proportion format we use to solve these problems is: percent100=partwhole\frac{\text{percent}}{100}=\frac{\text{part}}{\text{whole}}

Say we had the question: Jones landed 4545 out of 8080 jabs. What percent is this? This can also be rewritten as What percent of 8080 is 4545? So, our goal is to place these numbers into the proportion format we have.

We want to find the percent, so that can be left as unknown. We also have 4545 jabs out of 8080. So 4545 is the part of it, and 8080 is the whole amount. Therefore, our proportion becomes: x100=458080x=100⋅4580x=4,50080x80=4,50080x=56.25\begin{align} \frac{x}{100}&=\frac{45}{80}\\ 80x&=100\cdot45\\ 80x&=4{,}500\\ \frac{80x}{\color{#29A603}{80}}&=\frac{4{,}500}{\color{#29A603}{80}}\\ x&=56.25 \end{align} So, Jones connected on 56.25%56.25\% of his jabs. In essence, we have converted a fraction to a percent.

35%35\% of what number is 2222? Round to the nearest hundredth.

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Type a concept, like “slope” or “photosynthesis”.

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