We use percentages daily, often without even realizing it. Whether calculating tips at a restaurant or working out a sale price at the store, percentages are a part of our lives. So how to get a percentage of 2 numbers? This blog post will look at some real-life applications of calculating percentages. By the end, you’ll better understand how this math concept is used in the world around us.
Sales and Discounts
A big part of percentages is finding the original price when the percent off is given, and vice versa. For example, say a shirt is on sale for 20% off. To find the original price of the shirt, we take 100% – 20%, which equals 80%. This means that 80% of the original price equals the sale price. Therefore, if the sale price of the shirt is $36, we can calculate that100%=$45.
We divide the sale price by the original price to determine an item’s percentage. Using our example from before, we would take 36/$45=.8 or 80%. To make it a percentage, we move the decimal over two places and get 80%.
When discounts and sales are given as “X dollars off,” we can still use percentages to find either value. However, if we’re trying to find what percent off an item is being sold for, we must first convert the number of dollars into a decimal form.
Food
Percentages also show up when talking about food. For starters, recipes almost always use percentages when giving ingredient measurements. For example, a typical recipe might call for 1/2 cup (or 50%) of sugar. When doubling or halving a recipe, it’s helpful to know that 1/4 cup (or 25%) equals two tablespoons (or 16 teaspoons).
This can be useful for cooking and baking, where specific measurements are crucial to success. Likewise, a pie crust recipe may call for 2/3 cup (or 66 2/3 %)of butter, which can then be halved to 1/3 cup (or 33 1/3 %)of butter if making only half a recipe’s worth of crust measuring food can also tell us how healthy it is.
The typical macronutrient breakdown in terms of percentages is 60% carbohydrates, 20% protein, and 20% fat. While this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, it’s an excellent general guideline to follow to maintain a balanced diet.
Investing
Regarding investing, percentages are key to understanding how much money you stand to make (or lose). For example, let’s say you invest $1,000 in a stock that goes up 10% over a year. This means that your investment is now worth $1,100. To calculate the percentage gain, we take the difference between the new value and the original value ($1,100 – $1,000), and then we divide it by the original value ($1,000). This gives us a 10% return on our investment.
Conclusion:
As you can see, percentages pop up all around us in everyday life! From sales and discounts to recipes and food labels, understanding how to calculate percentages can be helpful in so many ways. I hope this blog post has given you a better understanding of where and how percentages are used in real-life situations. Thanks for reading!