Question

At the ABC Electronics Store, a laptop was marked down 15% from its original price of $900. A store employee gets an additional 20% discount on the already marked-down price. How much does the employee pay for the laptop?

Answer 1

`$900 times 85% times 80% = $612`

Explanation:

He pays `$900 (1 - 15/100) (1 - 20/100) = 900(.85)(.8) = $612`

It's clear that if both discounts were off the original price it wouldn't matter which was applied first. What's interesting is here the second discount is applied to the price discounted by the first discount, but the order they're applied still doesn't matter.