Converting percents to decimals: 59.2%
About this video
The video converts 59.2% to a decimal. Because percent means 'per 100', 59.2% is 59.2 divided by 100, which you do by moving the decimal point two places to the left to get 0.592.
You'll be able to
- explain that a percent means 'per 100'.
- convert a percent to a decimal by dividing by 100.
- move the decimal point two places left to divide by 100.
Key words
- Percent
- Per 100; 59.2% means 59.2 out of every 100.
- Decimal
- A number written with a decimal point, like 0.592.
Transcript
Let's see if we can write 59.2%, if we can write this as a decimal. Well, 59.2%, this literally means 59.2 per cent, which literally means 59.2 per 100, which literally means 59.2 per 100, which is the same thing as 59.2 divided by 100. And If we were to divide 59.2 by 100, what would we get?
So this is the same thing is 59.2 divided by 100. So if we were to take 59.2, if we wanted to divide it by 10, we would move the decimal over to the left once. We would get 5.92. But we want to divide it by 100, so we move the decimal over to the left again. We're dividing by 10 once, and then we're dividing by 10 again.
Divide by 10 twice, you're essentially dividing by 100. So you move the decimal to the left twice, you get 0.592. And we'll just put a 0 out here just to clarify things. And we're done. We've written 59.2% as a decimal. We essentially just divided this by 100, which is dividing by 10 twice, moving the decimal once to the left, and then another time.
Or since we're dividing by 100, moving the decimal twice to the left. And we get 0.592.
Video © Khan Academy, used under CC BY-NC-SA. Watch on Khan Academy. Puzzicle is not affiliated with Khan Academy.