Maths Homework Question

[bobthebandit]

A company has 800 employees.
440 of these 800 employess are males.
176 of these employees are under 25 years old.
a) What percentages of males are employed by this company?
b) What percentage of employees are under 25?

Many thank for any replies

[frugalfred]

a. 440 x 100, then divide by 800; or shortly, 440 divided by 8 = 55%

[jim360]

To work out percentages, do the following calculation:

percentage = (number of things you are interested in) divided by (total number of things) times 100

So for part a), you have 440 males (the things you are interested in), 800 employees in total, so:

percentage of male employees = (440/800)*100 = 55%

The same calculation works for part b).

[frugalfred]

176 x 100, then divide by 800; or shortly, 176 divided by 8, = 22%

[frugalfred]

the rule I was taught was:

(AS divided by OF) x 100.
e.g. 176 AS a % OF 800

[factor-fiction]

Question a) is badly worded, in my opinion. It should say "What percentage of the company's employees are male?"

[frugalfred]

Agreed, F-F. "176 of THESE.." 176 of 800 or 440???

[factor-fiction]

Hi F_F- the point I was trying to make was that as the question stands I'd want to know what the overall number of males was in the population. If it's 30 million I'd say the answer is 440 as a percentage of 30 million

[frugalfred]

Quite so f-f. Having set examination papers myself, I can assure you that the biggest enemy is ambiguity!

[factor-fiction]

I remember a question asking something like "What is the difference between 17 and 44?" I assume the answer the examiner wanted was 27 but I felt answers such as "one is even and the other is odd" or "17 is a prime number whereas 44 isn't " were equally valid

[frugalfred]

Precisely the kind of thing I was referring to, f-f

[jim360]

Badly-worded questions are one thing: I saw a teacher set a question with a shape that was physically impossible. And then, he pressed on with trying to answer the question despite knowing this! I pointed this out... and got thrown out of the classroom. Apparently his teaching authority meant more to him than teaching the right things. It was horrific to watch, especially when despite knowing that the shape was physically impossible he carried on pressing ahead with answering the question, and inviting students to guess at side lengths etc.-- and telling them that their guesses were "wrong"...

Worst. Teacher. Ever.

[bobthebandit]

Many thanks for all your answers