What’s a Percent?

Wrap-up

As you've seen in this lesson, percents appear in many places in our everyday lives. Understanding percents can help you double-check deductions in your paycheck. And you learned that knowing how to convert percents, decimals, and fractions is an important skill for working with numbers in real life.

In this lesson you:

• Explored the meaning of percents
• Practiced converting percents into fractions and decimals into percents
• Matched equal fractions, decimals, and percents

On your own:

• Practice using percents in everyday life. The next time you go grocery shopping, analyze your bill. Add up how much you spent on produce (fruits and vegetables). What percentage of your total grocery bill did you spend on produce? Do the same for dairy.
• Practice using percents to score tests. Either use real tests, if you have children in school or are taking classes yourself, or invent scores (for example, 22 correct answers out of 40 questions in all).
• Take a calculator to a store and looks for items marked down by a certain percent. Calculate how much money you can save on the sale items.