Percents

Percents and fractions

Knowing how to write percents as fractions and vice versa can help you in your everyday life. For example, let's say you earned a grade of 80% on a test. You can convert 80% into a fraction to find out how many of your answers were correct. When your teacher grades the test, she may do the opposite. If a student got 8 out of 10 questions right, the teacher can convert 8/10 to a percent to give the student a grade.

Converting a percent into a fraction

When you're converting a percent into a fraction, it helps to remember that percents are always out of 100. You can practice with percents in our Introduction to Percents lesson.

Click through the slideshow to learn how to convert a percent into a fraction.

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  We're going to convert 30% into a fraction.

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  In Introduction to Percents, you learned that all percents are out of 100. In fact, that's what the word percent means.

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  So any percent is equal to itself over 100. In our example, 30% is equal to 30/100.

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  Now we've converted 30% into a fraction, but we still need to reduce it.

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  10 is the largest number that goes evenly into 30 and 100. So we can divide both parts of the fraction by 10.

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  We'll divide the numerator of the fraction first. 30 divided by 10 equals 3.

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  Now we'll divide the denominator. 100 divided by 10 equals 10.

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  So 30% is equal to 3/10.

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 Now it's your turn! Write these percentages as fractions. Make sure to reduce each fraction to its simplest form.

Converting a fraction into a percent

Converting a fraction uses two of the skills you just learned: writing a fraction as a decimal, and writing a decimal as a percent. Let's see how we can use these skills to convert a fraction into a percent.

Click through the slideshow to learn how to convert a fraction into a percent.

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  Let's convert 3/6 into a percent.

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  Just like when we converted a fraction into a decimal, we'll divide the numerator by the denominator.

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  3 divided by 6 equals 0.5.

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  We've turned our fraction into a decimal.

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  Now we'll turn the decimal into a percent by moving the decimal point two spaces to the right.

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  Now we'll turn the decimal into a percent by moving the decimal point two spaces to the right.

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  We'll also change the decimal point into a percent sign. 0.50 is equal to 50%.

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  So 3/6 is equal to 50%.

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 Now you try it. Convert these fractions into percents.