What is two hundred increased by twenty percent?

Answer 1

Let's translate this problem into a math equation to make it easier to understand.

"What is" means "something =" (let's call it ??? - it's our answer we want)

"increased by" means to add something.

So let's put in what we know.

??? = 200 + 20%

To find our ??? let's look at the other side, with numbers.

200 is not a percent, but 20% is. In order to work with these two numbers we need them to be either both plain numbers, or both percents.

20% is referring to "20 parts for every 100 I have"

200 is actually 100% of itself, right? It's not broken into pieces.

So we can represent 200 as 100%. or...

??? = 100% + 20%

and 100 + 20 = 120!

or, 120%. ... but of what? of 200!

Figuring out percent can be easy, especially with the number 200.

It's easy to find 10% of a number, just move the decimal point 1 space to the left!

200.00 (100%)

20.000 (10%) -- but we need 20% :(

Wait! 20% is just two 10%'s! So just multiply 20 x 2... or 40

Now we can put these numbers into our equation

??? = 200 + 40

Two hundred increased by 20% is 240! You could have just said 240.