Overheard – or actually “took part in”
So, the first grader in this house is learning at the speed of light. He is actually making me nervous with his antics and his uncanny ability to come up with some of the most off the wall questions ever. This morning, on the way to school, we had this conversation:
What does percent mean?
UH?
Percent, you know percentage, what does it mean?
UH?
You know, like you ask daddy all the time what the percentage is?
UH?
You know like the other day, you was asking him what the percent of a number something was, what does that mean?
UH?
Mom, what does it mean?
Ok, a percent is a part of something. Like you can have half of something and that would be 50%.
But, that wasn’t the questions you were asking daddy, what is percentage?
UH?
MOM!
Ok, it’s a math problem and I have to have a calculator or pencil and paper to do it, but your daddy is very smart and he can do the math problem in his head so it is just easier to ask him than to find a calculator or do the math myself.
So, is that what percent means?
UH?
This post has 2 comments
August 28th, 2009
Percent means “of one hundred” because per means “of” and cent means 100 (which is why we often call pennies “cents” because there are 100 of them in a dollar).
Thus, a percentage is how much of something there is expressed in a form of out of one hundred. Thus, if you have a quarter (25 cents) you have 25% of a dollar because you have 25 of the one hundred that you need to make up a dollar.
This, of course, gets more confusing when you’re talking about something that isn’t easily broken into 100 pieces. For example, if you have 20 green army men, and you let your friend borrow 10 of them, what percentage of them do you still have? There are several ways to calculate this, but you could make the original number equal to 100 and then do the same thing to the other equation:
20 * x = 100
10 * x = y
100/20 = x -> 5
10 * 5 = 50 -> Your friend has 50% of your green army men.
Percentages can be really hard to do in your head. But we often memorize what some of the basic ones are: 1/2 = 50%, 1/4 = 25%…
~Luke
PS. MathTacular is an awesome DVD series [smile]
August 28th, 2009
Luke,
I’m wondering now why it was that I hunted your email down to make sure you knew where to find me?
Ha, just kidding. Email me your phone number and as soon as my son is home from his Grammy’s house, I’ll call you and you can explain that to him and if you make him understand……..because that went way over my head, like swoooosh…I’ll be using my human calculator that sits over there on the sofa, lmao