More Percent Problems

Mental Short Cuts

"Percent of" Short Cut

The word "of" in mathematics often means to multiply. This makes problems like "find 10% of 250" easy to translate directly into the multiplication problem (0.10) · (250). We can immediately write and work the necessary multiplication problem without using an equation.

(250)(0.10) = (250)(0.1) = 25.0 = 25

Notice that we needed both the percent value and the base value in order to use this shortcut of the Basic Percent Equation, (percent) × (base) = (amount).

Self Check Problem

A 30% off coupon is used to purchase a shirt priced at $65. How much will a person save by using the coupon?

Solution

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