Solving problems with percentages

Solving problems with percentages

Expressing one quantity as a percentage of another

Question

There were only 14 students in Rina's class on Wednesday. The other 11 were absent.
What percentage of Rina's class was absent?

Solution

The number of students present in the class = 14.
The number of students absent from the class = 11.
Total number of students in the class = 25.
Fraction of students absent from the class = \(\dfrac{11}{25}\).
There are two approaches to this.

Method 1

\(\dfrac{11}{25}\) = \(\dfrac{11 \times 4}{25 \times 4}\) = \(\dfrac{44}{100}\).

Hence, \(\dfrac{11}{25}\) = 44%. You can do this easily in your head as 25 divides exactly into 100.

Method 2

The other method is to multiply by \(\dfrac{100}{1}\). This method always works.

\(\dfrac{11}{25}\) = \(\dfrac{11}{25}\) × \(\dfrac{100}{1}\)% = \(\dfrac{11 \times 4}{1 \times 1}\)% = 44%.

It is good to include part of the question in your answer. In this case: 44% of the students were absent from the course.

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