Question

How would you write 40% as a fraction?

Answer 1

It is `40%=40/100=4/10=2/5`

Answer 2

`40% " is "40/100 " or "2/5`

Explanation:

Percentage is parts of 100. This means that to find the quantity you would (in theory) split something up into 100 equal sized parts and then count out 40 of them.

Suppose we had 300 beads you would split this up into 100 lots of three beads. You would then select 40 of these lots giving a total of `40 times 3 = 120` beads.

Mathematically:

`40/100 times 300=120`

but `40/100`can be simplified as follows:

`( 40 -: 20)/(100 -: 20) = 2/5`

So in the example I gave 40% of 300 is in fact `2/5 times 300`

In conclusion: the word part 'cent' in percent means 100. The word part 'per' in percent means 'for each'. So in effect your 40 percent (40%) means that for every 100 you select 40.