Question

The original price of a sweater is $36. The sale price is 85% of the original price. What is the sale price of the sweater?

Answer 1

`$36xx(100%-85%)=$36xx(15%)=$36xx.15=$5.40`

Explanation:

We can do this a couple of ways. First I'll do it by finding the discount and subtracting it from the original price:

`$36xx85%=$36xx.85=$30.60`

`$36-$30.60=$5.40`

And so the sale price is $5.40.

We can work this problem a different way - if we don't care about the amount of the discount and only want the sale price, we can think about the problem this way: if the sweater's original price is $36 and so that is 100% of the price and it's 85% off, only 15% of the price is left, so we can write:

`$36xx(100%-85%)=$36xx(15%)=$36xx.15=$5.40`