APPLICATIONS

WITH PERCENT
General plan for solving percent problems:

1. Read the problem carefully.

2. Decide what is unknown (A, B, R)
3. Write down the values you do
know for
A, B or R
4. Set up and solve the equation
5. Check to see that the answer is
reasonable. Rework the problem if
the answer does not make sense.
Examples
1. Sally has 50 pens in which 30 are
blue. What percent of Sallys total pens
are blue?
2. In a class, 30% were girls. There were
27 girls. What is the total number of
students in the given class?
3. John sent a total of 250 text messages
last week. Forty-five percent of the
messages were sent to his mother.
How many messages did his mother
receive from him?
Examples
4. A man has 4 daughters. He calculates
that 90% of the phone calls that come
into the house are for one of his
daughters. If 280 phone calls came in
last month, how many of the 280 were
for his daughters?
5. In a 5.2- cubic-yard mixture of
concrete, sand and gravel, there are 2.6
cubic yards of sand and 1.4 cubic yards
of gravel. What percent of the mixture
is concrete?
Examples
6. A microwave oven is on sale at a 30%
discount. What is the discount if the
original price is marked at $275? What
is the sale price?
7. If sales tax is figured at 6%, what
would be the final cost of the
microwave oven in Example 6?
8. Womens coats were on sale for $250.
This was a discount of $100 from the
original selling price. What was the
original selling price? What was the
rate of discount?
Examples
9. An auto dealer paid $7566 for a large
order of a special part. This was not the
original price. He received a 3%
discount off the original price because
he paid cash. What was the original
price?
10. A saleswoman earns a salary of $900
a month plus a commission of 8% on
whatever she sells after she has sold
$6500 in merchandise. What did she
earn the month she sold $11,800 in
merchandise?