Converting Percents Into Fractions

dkmathstats (61)in #mathematics • 7 years ago

Hi there. This post is about converting percents to fractions. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with mixed fractions, improper fractions and multiplying fractions.

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Introduction

There are times when you need to convert percents into fractions in your calculations. The word per in percents refers to division or a fraction's denominator. In addition, word cent is French for 100. The word percent can be referred to as per 100.

Converting From Percents To Fractions

This section will start with examples before stating a general rule.

100% can be represented as or simply 1.

50% can be represented as or one half.

300% can be represented as or 3.

10% can be represented as .

You can see that the general rule here is that given a percentage in the form of x%, the fraction is given by:

Remember to have the fraction in reduced terms.

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Percents With Decimals Cases

There are cases where the percents contain decimals such as 0.5%. The general rule can be applied along with converting the decimal into a fraction. Here are a few examples.

0.5% can be represented as .

22.5% can be represented as:

17.13% can be represented as:

This next summary image is a nice visual aid showing how to go from percents to fractions along with going from percents to decimals (and back), and going from fractions to percents. For this post, the focus is on going from percents to fractions. (dp = decimal places)