After a 70% reduction, you purchase a new sofa on sale for $156. What is the original price?

Answer 1

If the original price of the sofa, let's call it P, is reduced by 70% then the price you paid is 100% of P MINUS 70% of P. So you paid 30% of P and that was $156. Now to translate that into an equation we have

30% of P = $156

When doing percent math, change the percent into a decimal by dividing by 100, so 30/100 = 0.3.

0.3 of P = $156

Here the word 'of' is our clue to multiply, so:

0.3 × P = $156

To solve for P, we need to move the 0.3 to the other side. To do this, divide both sides by 0.3.

P = $156/0.3

We can plug this into a calculator and find that the original price of the sofa, P, was $520!