So in the manager's case it means
that for every £100 the artist earns, the manager
takes £20.
To find out how much money the manager
gets every year first divide the percentage by 100
i.e.
20/100 = 0.2
Then multiply this by the artist's profit £120,000
which gives £24,000 (not bad money for a few days
spent on the mobile phone!).
Why do we divide the percentage by
100? We are looking at 20
as a proportion of 100 - this can be shown as a
fraction i.e. 20/100 - calculate the answer to
the fraction and it gives you the proportion of anything you like which will
make 20%.
If the artist was pretty poor and
only made £8,000 a year then the manager would
get 0.2 x 8,000 which is the princely sum of £1,600
(time to sell the Ferrari).
Percentages are used in the workplace
in various ways. When you are presented with a bill for a car service at a garage,
building work or if you buy a new computer in a shop etc. you will see a line
added to the bill after the actual price which is VAT (this is Value Added Tax)
it is an extra amount you need to add to your bill which goes to the Government.
Consider this Garage bill:
New Starter Motor £40.00
Service £60.00
Labour £50.00
Sub Total £150.00
VAT (17.5%)
£26.25
Total £176.25
If you have a calculator handy, to
calculate the VAT simply multiply 150 by .175.
VAT can also be worked out another
way - have you noticed that 17.5 is made up of
10 and 5 and 2.5.
Have you also noticed that 5 is half of 10
and 2.5 is half of 5?
If we work out 10%
of £150 - that's easy - it's £15
(0.1 x 150).
If we now work out 5%
of £150 - that's also easy - it's half of £15
- i.e. £7.50
And finally work out 2.5%
of £150 - that's easy too - it's half of 7.50
i.e. £3.75
Now, add the answers together and
Abracadabra - 15 + 7.50 + 3.75 = £26.25
Percentages can also be looked at
another way:
If 8
out of 10 cat owners said that their cat prefers
Meaty Mouse cat food - what percentage of cat owners say their cats did not
prefer it?
8
out of 10 is the same as 80
out of 100 = 80% cats
prefer Meaty Mouse.
2
out of 10 cats don't prefer Meaty Mouse i.e. 20
out of 100 = 20% of
cats absolutely hate Meaty Mouse.
