I used to think percentages were really tricky until I played an app on my phone called ‘Elevate’ – only started with it a couple of years ago! I was getting the percentage questions wrong, so the app was telling me how to work it out quicker.
As you can imagine, during tutoring, this has been quite useful!
So the method I’ve been showing my students is to divide by 100, by moving the decimal place and then multiplying by whatever number percentage we need.
For example, to find 46% of 450
1% would be 450 divided by 100
450.00 becomes 4.5 by moving the decimal place 2 steps to the left
1% of 450 is 4.5
Multiply the result of 1% by 46 to get 46%
4.5 x 46 = 207
So 46% of 450 is 207
What do you think? Do you use an easier method?
Challenge!
Can you work out these percentages? I’ll give the answers next week!
- Find 25% of 60
- Find 60% of £200
- Find 75% of 300 metres
- Find 20% of 10 Kg
- Find 30% of 5 metres
- Find 5% of 150 Km