How do you figure a percent?

Answer 1

If you want to figure a percent, you would have to have two quantities, which are the overall amount of something, and some part of that overall amount, and you want to know what percent the part is of the whole. This can refer to anything, but arbitrarily, let us say that you want to know what percent of the people in Somewhereville live on Main Street. So first you get the total population of Somewhereville which let us say is 53,000. then you get the total population of Main Street, which let us say is 9,000. So, we divide 9,000 by 53,000 and we get .17 which is a bit less than a fifth. That's a fraction but it is not yet a percentage. To make it into a percentage we then multiply by 100, so .17 becomes 17%. What this actually means is that out of every hundred people who live in Somewhereville, 17 of them live on Main St.