5.5: Percent
Percents are another form of fractions and are used in many everyday situations. Interest rates, credit card charges, taxes, pay deductions, increases and decreases are all calculated with percent. Percents are a convenient way to express part of the whole thing because the unwritten denominator is always 100.
- The denominator of 100 is not written or said.
- A percent sign % follows the number and is read as “percent.”
- The whole thing is 100%
- [latex]100\% = 1[/latex]
Remember:
- Cent is the Latin word meaning a hundred or a hundredth.
- per is a Latin word meaning by or for each.
So, percent means for each hundred.
Attribution
This chapter has been adapted from Unit 2: Percent in Adult Literacy Fundamental Mathematics: Book 6 – 2nd Edition (BCcampus) by Liz Girard and Wendy Tagami (2022), which is under a CC BY 4.0 license.
