Percentage

Question

 At a novelty shop, a charm for a bracelet is priced at $16.99.  A sales tax of 7% of the $16.99 will be added, rounded to the nearest cent, to the price of the charm. You have 20 one-dollar bills, but how much will you need in coins if you want to have exact change ready? 

Answer 1

When you want to find the percentage of something we can do it in a couple of different ways.  The easiest one once you're used to using %'s is just by multiplying by the decimal version.

 

So if you want 7% of 16.99, that means you want to do .07 * 16.99.  Once you calculate that by hand or with a calculator, round it off to 2 decimal places (for cents), and add it to the original 16.99 price (since it's tax).

 

If you guys haven't done it this way yet, it's also possible to calculate the % by setting up a proportion.

 

% / 100 = part / whole   (or something similar)

 

in this case it would be 7 / 100 = x / 16.99 , and you should end up with the same number as above.