Humanity has long mastered how to calculate a percentage of the amount. The word itself came from the Latin "per cent", in fact, in English it remains so. “Percent” - literally translated “hundredth part”. The name is very apt, because this concept means exactly one hundredth of the sum. If you forgot school science and want to understand how to get this fraction of the number, say 280 550, you just have to divide it by one hundred (or put a comma two digits closer to the beginning). So we get 2,805.50. And how do you know how much of the above amount will amount to three percent? Very simple: we multiply one hundredth (in our example, 2,805.50) by three. It turns out 8 416.50.
As you can see, it’s very simple. If you still can’t do it in your mind to divide the original number by 100 and multiply the result by the required number of percentages, then there is another, quite basic, way to calculate the percentages. As a rule, a modern person always has a calculator at hand. On most models of this computing device above the buttons with numbers there are specific icons, and one of them is the “%” icon. Using this button, the calculation process does not take more than two seconds. Suppose you need to find out how much 7% of 550 will be. You type 550 on the calculator, then press the x button (multiply), then dial 7, and then, instead of the = sign, press the% key. The result appears on the scoreboard: 38.5.
But sometimes we need to learn not how to calculate the percentage of the amount, but rather, what percentage of one number is from another. Here is a simple example: two numbers - 1100 and 253. What percentage is 253 of the total number 1100? In order to calculate this, we need to multiply the smaller number (253) by 100, and divide the result by the larger number (1100). 23% come out. Sometimes you need to calculate the amount minus some percent. Often this relates to salary. You know the size of the salary, but it’s interesting to know how much you get on hand after the accountant takes away taxes from the amount of the salary. We collect the salary amount on the calculator, click on the “-” icon, then enter the number of hundredths that the state charges as taxes, and click on “%”.
How to calculate a percentage of the amount using Excel? In the column where we want to put the desired%, we need to enter the “=” icon, then the number from which we calculate the percentage, then the multiplication sign and, finally, the number of hundredths. Then press "Enter", and the result appears in the cell. For clarity, we give an example: =, 1750, *, 48,%, Enter. Before the operation, you need to configure the program for calculations: left-click on the cell.
People who are far from computing in their daily lives are often bought for attractive, supposedly insignificant, loan payments at banks or pawnshops and often fall into disarray. How to calculate the percentage of the loan amount correctly? It is necessary not only to calculate the loan arithmetically, but also to multiply the amount received by the amount of time (days, months, years) by which it is drawn up. For example, you want to buy a car and take 150 thousand at a bank at 13% per annum for 5 years. How much do you need to pay the financial institution during these five years? We consider: 150,000 x 13% x 5 years = 97,500 (and this is only interest). The debt itself needs to be added to this amount: 97,500 + 150,000 = 247,500.
Therefore, you should not buy promises of extremely low rates, but you need to weigh everything and calculate it in your head or on a calculator. Not in vain, after all, back in the Middle Ages, bankers developed entire complex tables showing how to calculate the percentage of the amount issued to the borrower. These calculations were first declassified only in 1584. And by the way, do you know where such an icon representing a percentage came from - “%”? It appeared in circulation only in 1685 thanks to ... simple myopia. At that time, a Guide on Commercial Mathematics was published for business students in Paris. The typesetter overlooked and adopted the cto symbol, which was used to denote the hundredth share, which was widespread until the end of the 17th century, for two small zeros separated by a slash. Happened %. And since it was a textbook, the new generation of merchants took the badge for granted.