Percentages

[Juliette]

37% of people at school catch a bus to school. This represents 185 students. 120 people get to school by a car. What percentage of the school travel by car?

 

[pappus]

37% of people at school catch a bus to school. This represents 185 students. 120 people get to school by a car. What percentage of the school travel by car?

There are two different ways to do this question:

A: Calculate how many students represent exactly 1%. And now determine how often this "amount" of students is contained in 120.

B: Calculate the total amounts of students who are visiting the school. Then determine the percentage of 120 students to the total amount.

In both cases you should come out with 24%.

 

[yevest]

I think that the easiest way to solve this type of problem is to first get the total number of students in school. You can easily do that using a ratio approach with 185:37 as n:100. Then using a cross multiplication approach, you could carry out that there are 500 total students. Then you could now get how much percentage 120 is of 500. That yields 24%.