 |
| ||
| |||
|
| Math Central | Quandaries & Queries |
|
Question from shaelisa, a student: At a company fish fry, ½ in attendance are employees. Employees' spouses are 1/3 of the attendance. What is the percentage of the people in attendance who are not employees or employee spouses? |
Shaelisa,
What fraction are neither? You may find a pie chart helps.
(We are implicitly assuming than no employees are married to each other so the "employees" and "spouses" groups do not overlap.)
To turn this into a percentage, multiply the numerator (top) by 100 and then divide by the denominator (bottom)
You will find the answer is not a round percentage and has a repeating decimal. Your instructor may expect you to round to the nearest percent (eg, the percentage of spouses would be given as 33%), to give a percent-and-fraction answer (33 1/3 %), to give enough decimal places to show the repeating pattern (33.33...%) or to use an overline to indicate repetition (33.3% with a line drawn over the last 3)
Good Hunting!
-RD
| ||
| ||
| ||
 |
 |
|
Math Central is supported by the University of Regina and The Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences.