Question

Hugh calculated that he would spend $125 on school supplies the current year.

He in reality, spent $87.50 on school supplies. What is Hugh’s percent of error?

It could be the following...

42.9%

37.5%

30%

Or 3%

Once again, I am stumped...

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@nuttyliaczar @Josh.Marzak11 @Larryboxaplenty

Answer 1

What are the appropriate steps to take for this question?

Answer 2

First you would find the difference, then you would find what percentage of the expected value that difference is

Answer 3

$125 - $87.50 = $37.5,

Could you explain the second step again?

Answer 4

To find the percentage of something with respect to another number, divide the number in question by the total. So for example, we both know that 25 is 50% of 50, because when we divide 25/50 we get .5, which is equivalent to 50%

Answer 5

So you tell me what you think is the appropriate way to set this up. We want to find the percentage with respect to the expected value of 125

Answer 6

Here's what I have,

$125 - $87.50 = $37.5,

$37.5/$125 = 0.3

Does 0.3 = 3%

Right?

Answer 7

Yep you got it! Also get in the habit of checking if that answer makes sense. More often than not you can tell if you fundamentally did something wrong if you get an absurd answer. If you ended up with a huge percentage, we could probably dismiss that answer since the guy who made this guess was only about 40 dollars off his 125 dollar guess.

Answer 8

Alright!

That does makes sense,

Once again thank you!

I'll write this down for future reference.