Video Transcript
Let’s take a quick look on how we
convert percents to fractions. Here is an example of that.
Write 50 percent in fraction
form.
Percent is written in a format
that looks like this. And the word percent literally
means per hundred. Let’s start this process by
taking the 50 percent and writing it as a fraction with the denominator of
100. So, we have 50 over 100. 50 over 100 is a fraction form
of 50 percent. But when we work with fraction
form, we usually want to find the simplest or, another way to say it is, the
reduced fraction form.
So, let’s try to simplify the
fraction 50 over 100. We need to think of something
that we can divide the numerator and the denominator by. Maybe you recognize almost
immediately that both the top and the bottom, the numerator and the denominator,
can be divided by 50. In that case, we end up with
the fraction one over two, or one-half. 50 percent in fraction form in
simplest terms is one-half.
But maybe you weren’t sure the
best way to simplify 50 over 100, and you didn’t immediately think about
dividing the numerator and the denominator by 50. There are a few other ways you
could get the same answer. Maybe you noticed that 50 and
100 are both divisible by 10. This will give you 50 over 100
equals five-tenths, but you’re still not in the simplest form. So, you would need to divide
again. You’ll then recognize that both
five and 10 are divisible by five. And again, we’ve reduced this
fraction 50 over 100 to one-half. We’ve just used two different
ways.
Let’s look at another example.
Convert 250 percent to fraction
form.
We need to remember here that
percent means per 100. So, we now write 250 percent in
fraction form out of 100, 250 as the numerator, 100 as the denominator. This is one of the fraction
forms of 250 percent, but we want the simplest fraction form of 250 percent,
which means we’re going to need to reduce again. Let’s start by dividing the
numerator and the denominator by 10. We’re left with 25 over 10 as
another fraction form of 250 out of 100, but it’s still not the simplest form of
this fraction because we recognize that both 25 and 10 are divisible by
five. When we do that we get
five-halves, or five over two as the simplest fraction form.
Sometimes though, we don’t just
want the simplest fraction form. We might want to write
five-halves as a mixed number. In that case, I would break up
the number into different parts, one part being four over two and another part
being one-half. The mixed number for
five-halves is two and one-half.
Here’s our last example.
Find eight percent in simplest
fraction form.
We start here, just like in all
of the other examples. We make eight percent a
fraction of eight over 100. Now, all we need to do here is
simplify this fraction to its most reduced form. What is something that both
eight and 100 is divisible by? I’m gonna choose four. We’re gonna divide the
numerator and the denominator by four. When you do that, you see that
eight divided by four is two, 100 divided by four is 25, our final answer here
being two twenty-fifths. So, when you divide the
numerator and the denominator by four, you get two twenty-fifths. Two twenty-fifths is eight
percent in simplest fraction form.
In summary, step one, change the
percent to a fraction with the denominator of 100. And finally, for step two, simplify
this fraction. You might also call this
reduce. Now, you know how to convert
percents into fractions.
