If I’m in the store and want to know the price-per-pound of food, do I divide the weight by the dollars, or do I divide the dollars by the weight?

Question

If I’m in the store and want to know the price-per-pound of food, do I divide the weight by the dollars, or do I divide the dollars by the weight?

In: Economics

Answer 1

There’s a handy trick for this – any time that you say “per X,” it means that X is the thing you’re dividing by. Same order as you’d say it in. So price per pound, you’ll want to divide the price by the number of pounds. Miles per gallon, you divide the miles traveled by the gallons used, and so on.

So if you spend $25 on 10 pounds of chicken, you’d divide 25/10 and get $2.5 per pound.