In the dog house

Look familiar? 

1) Pat scored 54 out of 200 on a test. What percent is this?

or...

2) 36 out of 300 people ride bikes to work. What percent is this?

The key to solving these types of questions comes in the words " out of ".

The " out of " number needs to be thrown " out of " the house. 200 has forgotten the wedding anniversary (yet again!) and has to go and sleep in the dog house. 200 is not allowed in the house.

54 is inside...

and 200 is out of the house, in the dog house...

So now we have...

 200 divided into 54. 

This is a job for Captain Zero and will be covered in the next blog post. 

Note: Do not get into the habit of assuming you are dividing the "bigger number" into the smaller one. You might get a question such as...

Pat scored 154 out of 150 on a test. Bonus marks were scored! What percent is this? 

If Pat scored more than 150, then the answer has to be more than 100%. In this case, 150 is your " out of " number.