PERCENT QUESTION

Question

In a particular sale, all items were discounted 40%. If the original price of an item was $50, what was its sale price?

Answer 1

Discount of 40% means that 40% of the original price was subtracted from the original price. Therefore, the sale price should be $50 (original price) minus 40% of $50 (discount). To represent this mathematically, it would be $50 - 0.4($50) = $50 - $20 = $30.

Alternatively, you could think of taking 40% off the original price as you having 60% left of the original price. Therefore, you could also get the sale price by calculating 60% of the original price. Mathematically that would be 0.6($50) = $30.

Answer 2

Since all items were discounted 40%, the sale price of each item is 100% - 40% = 60% of the original price. Thus, if an item's original price was $50, then the sale price was 60% of $50, which is (60/100)($50) = $30.