How to Calculate the Percent from a Number

Know how to calculate the percentage of the number, can come in handy not only to a high school student. In everyday life, this skill is necessary in order to calculate the loan payment, calculate and check whether the accountants have correctly calculated the amount of taxation for you when you receive wages. And to many employees of the most various firms and the enterprises this skill is simply necessary for work.

What is this percentage? From the school program, everyone remembers that the percentage in the world is considered to be a hundredth part of anything. That is, in other words, the expression "3 percent" should be understood as 3 hundredths of any number. For the sake of brevity, people accepted the word "percent" as "%".

And from the school bench, we all know how to calculate the percentage of the number: the number is divided by one hundred, finding the value of one percent, and then the resulting quotient is multiplied by the number denoting the number of percent that you want to find.

For example, it is necessary to find out what is equal to 28% of 500. The course of reasoning should be as follows:

1. We find the size of 1% of 500 by division.

500: 100 = 5

1. We find the given number by multiplying the obtained quotient from division by 100.

5 X 28 = 140.

That is, 28% of 500 is 28/100 of 500. Otherwise, you can write this action as follows:

500 X 28/100 = 140.

Since calculating the percentage of a number is not always easy in the mind, and the pen and paper are not everywhere at hand, today very many people use calculators.

For calculation, you can use the described method: the given number divided by one hundred and multiplied by the necessary number of percent.

There is a faster possibility of counting:

1. The specified number is entered in the calculator. In our case - 500.
2. Then press the "multiply" key.
3. Then we type the number of required percentages - for our variant this is 28.
4. Instead of equality, we select the sign% on the calculator.
5. We get the result - this is 140 in our example.

And how to calculate the percentage of the number on the computer using the calculation function in the Excel program? This is also a fairly simple procedure.

1. In the cell that displays the calculated percentage, the equal sign "=" is entered.
2. Then the specified number is written, from which you need to search for the percentage, or the "address" of the cell where this number has already been entered. In our example, we enter the number 500.
3. The third step is to put the sign "multiply" or "*".
4. Now we should write down the number that reflects the amount of interest sought. For us, this is 28.
5. The penultimate action will be the introduction of the sign "percentage", which has the form "%".
6. To get the result, just press the "Enter" button on the keyboard. The result - 140 - will not slow to appear on the monitor.

Before you start working in the Excel program, use the left mouse button to set the appropriate format in the table cells or use the menu function: "format - cells - number - percentage".

A reverse example of how to calculate a percentage of a number is the option of finding how much one number is percent of the other.

For example, we are given the numbers 140 and 500. The question is put this way: how many percent is 140 from 500?

1. First, we find what is equal to one percent of 500. That is, we go by the old scheme and divide 500 by 100. We get 5.
2. Now it remains to find out how many such percentages contain a given number of 140. For this, 140 should be divided by 5. We get the same 28 percent!
3. In one formula this calculation can be written as follows:

140: (500: 100) = 140: 500/100 = 140: 500 X 100 = 28.

That is, the number 140 from 500 is 28 percent.

And in order to find out how many percent one number is from the other, we should reduce the smaller number to the larger and the individual multiply by 100.

These skills are extremely important to the entrepreneur who trades. When setting prices for goods, it is usually necessary to know how to calculate the percentage of the number, since by this action the necessary "wrap-up" is made on the goods. It is most convenient to make the same assortment in percent for the whole assortment, for example, 15%.

But to calculate the net income you need another skill. For example, the daily revenue in the stall amounted to 3450 rubles. What is the net income from the goods sold? Some beginning entrepreneurs naively calculate 15% of gross revenue, and make a gross mistake! Having got rid of the turnover obtained in such an incorrect way by "cheating", then they sit and break their head, where the shortage came from.

And everything is very simple. After the wrap-up, not 100% of the cost began to be present in the product, but 100% + 15% = 115%. Therefore, in order to find the amount of the gained added value, 15% are calculated as follows:

1. Find 1% of the revenue, dividing it not by 100, but by 115. That is, in our case

3450: 115 = 20

1. And now you can look for added value, which you can bravely extract from the turnover.

20 X 15 = 300

These figures are taken "from the ceiling", so do not seriously take this data. But the very methods of calculation are worthy of attention, there are no mistakes in them.