I am reteaching myself math, but something is bugging me soooo bad and I can’t find the answer. What is a real life example of multiplying a fraction by a fraction? I was wondering why .05 to the 5th exponent would get smaller not bigger. This is driving me bonkers.
Sure 1/2 makes sense, but how about 1/2 times 3/5 in real life?!?
Edit: OMFG. Math is cool and makes sense. Finally, I’m 28. Thank you all!!!!
Edit: I was given an AP Scholar award, but it was not for math.
* * * The best explanation goes to the person who explained “times” and “of” were synonomous!!!! * * *
NOW EXPLAIN THIS: How am I in the 99.9th percentile for arithmetic, but suck at math?! Do I have potential? Am I still gifted in “math” or are math and arithmetic too separate things. A professor told me they are different parts of the brain.
In: Mathematics
Hi OP,
I know this has been explained, but I used to teach and write test prep manuals for one of THE BIG test prep companies, and I thought I might also provide a little insight on the most wonderful components of complicated math – percentages.
If I say to you “what’s 25% of 100”, it’s pretty easy to say “25”, right? We know 25% means a quarter, and one quarter of 100 is 25. It’s nice, it’s easy.
But WHY does 25% mean a quarter? What’s going on there?
Any time you see a percent sign, it means “divide by 100.” So if you take 25% and follow this rule, then 25% means 25/100. And you can reduce that down to 1/4. [Fun fact, quarter comes from the latin *quattor*, meaning four. You need four quarters to make the whole of something. That’s why, in fluid FREEDOM measurements, there’s four quarts to a gallon).
(so, other users have talked about OF meaning multiply): 25% of 100 can be thought of as 25/100 *aka 25 percent* times *aka of* 100.
25/100 is 1/4. 1/4 multiplied by 100 is 25.
I hope this makes sense so far. So when you hear that a credit card might be offering an 8% interest rate, the way to think about that is:
8/100 (because remember, percent means divide by a hundred) times the amount you’ve borrowed.
Now, the cool thing is that this is a kinda interesting way to get into multiplying fractions! If you have 50% of a banana, you have (50/100) of a banana. That reduces to 1/2, and that means you have a half of that banana.
But then what happens if you’re gonna make a sandwich and you need 25% of the remaining banana? You take that 25% (25/100 aka 1/4) and multiply it by what you still have (1/2 banana).
(1/2) (aka the amount of banana you currently have) * 1/4 (the amount you need for your delicious sandwich), which gives you 1/8. Your sandwich will need 1/8 of one whole banana.
One additional fun fact is that percent literally comes from per (meaning for) and cent (meaning one hundred). If I told you I had 5 laptops for every one hundred students, that would mean 5 *percent* of students get laptops. That’s why you can think about percent meaning divide by a hundred.
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