Percentages

Percentages – Its all in the name: Per as in ‘out of’ and cent as in ‘century’ ‘dollars (or Euros) and cents’ ‘Centurion’ and ‘hundred’ in French. Percent means: ‘out of 100’

So to turn a percentage into a fraction, just shove it over one hundred:

58% = ⁵⁸⁄₁₀₀ …

… but don’t forget to CANCEL DOWN the fraction, to become ²⁹⁄₅₀. Easy!

Percentages to decimals is just as easy – remember what percent means? Yep, out of one hundred, so simply divide your percent by 100 to convert it into a decimal:

58% ÷ 100 = 0.58

Going the other way is just as easy – to turn a decimal into a percentage simply multiply a decimal by 100:

0.27 x 100 = 27%

Turning a fraction into a percentage can be tough, but remember – percent means out of 100, so just ‘cancel up’ the fraction until its out of 100 and your done:

¹³⁄₂₀ We need to make the bottom number 100 so: multiply the bottom by 5 to turn it into 100, and then multiply the top by 5 as well (“whatever we do to the bottom, we do to the top”)to give:

¹³⁄₂₀ = ⁶⁵⁄₁₀₀ = 65%

Easy! Follow these simple steps and you, too, will soon be getting 100%!

If you want to find out how to find the percentage of a number – e.g. what is 65% of 180 – you need to read this.