Percents

Finding the percent

You just learned that 16 of your 32 cousins prefer chocolate ice cream to strawberry ice cream. You want to find out what percentage of your cousins likes chocolate ice cream. You can rewrite this example like this:

?% of 32 = 16

This time, the number we're missing is the percent. We want to know what percent is equal to 16 out of 32.

Click through the slideshow to learn how to find the percent.

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  We want to find out what percent of 32 is equal to 16.

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  First, we'll replace the word of with a multiplication sign.

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  This time, the percent is our missing number, so we can't turn it into a decimal. We'll leave it the way it is for now.

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  To get the missing number alone on one side of the equation, we'll divide 32 by itself.

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  To keep the two sides of the equals sign the same, we'll divide 16 by 32 too. 

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  32 divided by 32 equals 1.

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  We'll replace 32 with 1 and divide the right side of the equation. 16 divided by 32 equals 0.50.

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  Since our missing number times 1 is equal to 0.50, our missing number is also equal to 0.50.

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  We'll rewrite 0.50 as a percent by moving the decimal point two places to the right. 0.50 is equal to 50%.

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  Now we can replace the question mark in our example with 50. So 16 is 50% of 32.

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  Let's try another example. We're going to find what percent is equal to 15 out of 300.

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  First, we'll replace the word of with a multiplication sign.

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  Again, we're missing the percent. So we can't turn the percent into a decimal.

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  We'll divide 300 by itself to get rid of it. To keep the two sides of the equation equal, we'll have to divide 15 by 300 too.

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  Let's start with the left side of the equation. 300 divided by 300 equals 1.

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  We'll replace the 300 with a 1. Now we'll divide the right side of the equation. 15 divided by 300 equals 0.05. 

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  Our missing number times 1 equals 0.05. So our missing number is equal to 0.05 too.

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  Now we'll turn 0.05 into a percent by moving the decimal point two places to the right. 0.05 is equal to 5%.

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  Now we can replace the question mark in our original problem with 5%. So 15 is 5% of 300.

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 Find the percent in each of these examples.

30 out of 50 of the stores in your neighborhood sell pickles. What percentage of the stores sell pickles?

There are 200 elderly people in your neighborhood. 80 of them don't know how to send text messages. What percentage of elderly people in your neighborhood don't know how to send texts?

Your local team has won 9 out of 45 basketball games in the past year. What percentage of games did the team win?