Question

How do you find the percent of increase from 47 lb to 52 lb?

Answer 1

Divide the original amount by the amount of the increase and then multiply that by 100.

Explanation:

A “percent” is always the decimal fraction of an amount times 100 ( per cent ). A percent change is the ratio of the change to the original amount.

In this example the original amount is 47, and the final amount is 52. Thus, the change is 47 + 5 = 52, or an increase of 5. The decimal fraction is thus 5/47 = 0.1064 and the percent increase is 0.1064 * 100 = 10.64%

If we went from 52 to 47 it would be a decrease of 5 from an original of 52, so the percent decrease would be 5/52 * 100 = 9.62%

Note that this means an equal percentage change in a value in both directions does NOT end up at the same original value! As this example shows, it also means that an equal amount of change is not the same percentage of change from the original value.