mr. trapani has 25 students in his class. 15 of them are boys and the rest are girls. what percentage of his students are boys and what percent are girls?

Question

I need help to solve this percent problem for 6 grade math. I also need to show my work for my teacher to see

Answer 1

Hi Jennifer--

 

"per cent" literally means "out of 100," so whenever you see "what percent," immediately write down "x/100."

 

You know that there are 15 boys out of 25 kids total, so set up your proportion as:

 

15/25 = x/100. Then you cross-multiply:

 

25x = 1500. Divide by 25 and you get...

 

60. In other words, 15 out of 25 would be 60 out of 100, or 60%.

 

And if the boys make up 60%, then the girls have to be the remaining...

 

40%

 

Hope this helps!

 

Matt in Ossining, New York

Answer 2

Jennifer, percent means "for each 100" so 60% could be written as 60/100 or even 6/10 ooooor even 3/5.

 

We have that 15/25 of the class are boys.  We figure that 25 - 15 = 10, so there are 10 girls, or 10/25.

 

Let's do the 10 girls.  We set 10/25 = p/100.  P = the percent.

 

We can see that 25 x 4 = 100, right?  So, we need to multiply 10 x 4 = 40.  10/25 = 40/100

 

This means the class is 40% girls.  We can skip figuring the boys the same way, because the whole class is 100%.  100 - 40 = 60% boys.

 

Hope this helps!