Knowing how to calculate the percentage of a number can be useful not only to a high school student. In everyday life, this skill is necessary in order to calculate the loan payment, to calculate and check whether the accountants correctly calculated the amount of taxation when receiving wages. And for many employees of various firms and enterprises this skill is simply necessary for work.
What is this - a percentage? Everyone remembers from the school curriculum that it is customary to consider one hundredth of anything as a percentage in the world. That is, in other words, the expression "3 percent" should be understood as 3 hundredths of any number. For the sake of brevity, people have adopted the designation of the word “percentage” with a “%”.
And from school, we all know how to calculate the percentage of the number: divide the number by one hundred, finding the value of one percent, and then multiply the resulting quotient by a number that indicates the number of percent that you need to find.
For example, you need to find out what 28% of 500 is equal to. The line of reasoning should be as follows:
- We find the size of 1% of 500 by division.
500: 100 = 5
- We find the given number by multiplying the obtained quotient from the division by 100.
5 X 28 = 140.
That is, 28% of 500 is 28/100 of 500. In another way, this action can be written as follows:
500 X 28/100 = 140.
Since calculating a percentage of a number is not always easy in the mind, and pen and paper are not always at hand, today very many use calculators.
To calculate, you can use the described method: divide the given number by one hundred and multiply by the required number of percent.
There is a faster calculation option:
- The specified number is entered into the calculator. In our case, 500.
- Then the “multiply” key is pressed.
- Then we gain the number of percentages sought - for our option, this is 28.
- Instead of equality, select the% sign on the calculator.
- We get the result - this is 140 in our example.
And how to calculate the percentage of the number on the computer using the calculation function in the Excel program? This is also a fairly simple procedure.
- In the cell that displays the calculated percentage, the equal sign "=" is entered.
- Next, a predetermined number is written from which to search for a percentage, or the “address” of that cell where this number is already entered. In our example, we enter the number 500.
- The third step will be to put the sign “multiply” or “*”.
- Now you should write down the number that reflects the number of percent sought. For us it is 28.
- The penultimate action will be the introduction of the sign “percentage”, which has the form “%”.
- To get the result, it remains only to press the "Enter" button on the keyboard. The result - 140 - will not slow to appear on the monitor.
Before starting work in the Excel program, you should left-click on the appropriate format in the table cells or use the menu function: "format - cells - number - percentage".
The opposite example of how to calculate the percentage of a number is the option of finding how much one number is percent of another.
For example, we are given the numbers 140 and 500. The question is posed in this way: how many percent is 140 out of 500?
- First we find what one percent of 500 is equal to. That is, we follow the old pattern and divide 500 by 100. We get 5.
- Now it remains to find out how many such percentages a given number 140 contains. To do this, 140 need to be divided by 5. We get the same 28 percent!
- In one formula, this calculation can be written as follows:
140: (500: 100) = 140: 500/100 = 140: 500 X 100 = 28.
That is, the number 140 of 500 is 28 percent.
And in order to find out how many percent one number is from another, we should divide the smaller number by the larger and quotient multiplied by 100.
These skills are extremely important to the entrepreneur who is engaged in trade. When setting prices for a product, the ability to calculate the percentage of the number is usually required, since with this action the necessary “mark-up” for the product is done. It is most convenient to do the same wrapping as a percentage for the entire assortment, for example, 15%.
But to calculate net income, you need another skill. For example, the daily revenue in the stall was 3450 rubles. What is the net income from goods sold? Some novice entrepreneurs naively calculate 15% of gross revenue, and make a gross mistake! Having taken the “wrap” received in such an incorrect way from the turnover, then they sit and puzzle over where the shortage came from.
And everything is very simple. After cheating, the product began to be present not 100% of the cost, but 100% + 15% = 115%. Therefore, to find the amount of the added value, 15% is calculated as follows:
- They find 1% of the revenue, dividing it not by 100, but by 115. That is, in our case
3450: 115 = 20
- And now you can look for additional value that can be bravely extracted from circulation.
20 X 15 = 300
These figures are taken "from the ceiling", so do not take these data seriously. But the calculation methods themselves deserve attention, they have no errors.