Percentages
What a percentage is, how it links to fractions and decimals, and how to handle percentage change, successive change and reverse-percentage questions at bank-exam speed.
What you will be able to do
- Convert freely between a percentage, a fraction and a decimal.
- Apply the percentage-change formula and read it in both directions.
- Combine two successive percentage changes into one net change.
- Recover an original amount from a figure that already includes a percentage change.
What is inside this lesson
- 1What a percentage means
- 2Percentage, fraction and decimal are the same number
- 3The three relationships you actually use
- 4Turn an increase or decrease into a single multiplier
- 5Worked example: a fee concession
- 6Worked example: successive percentage change
- 7Common mistakes
- 8Quick revision
- 9Practice
Get Pro for full access. This is section 1 of 9; the rest of the lesson opens with Pro at onelystop.in/upgrade.
What a percentage means
A percentage is just a fraction whose denominator is fixed at 100. "Per cent" is Latin for "per hundred", so 37 per cent means 37 out of every 100, or the fraction 37/100.
Because the denominator never changes, a percentage is a convenient common language for comparing parts of different wholes. Saying one section was cleared by 62 per cent of candidates and another by 58 per cent is instantly comparable, even if the two sections had different numbers of candidates.
In bank exams percentages appear everywhere: data interpretation, profit and loss, simple and compound interest, and direct percentage questions in the arithmetic set. Treat this topic as a tool you will reuse, not a stand-alone chapter.
Reading the 9 sections above is free. A free account opens the first 2 topics of every subject in full, along with flashcards and private notes.