Percentage

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In mathematics, a percentage is a way of expressing a number as a fraction of 100 (per cent meaning "per hundred" in French). It is often denoted using the percent sign, "%", or the abbreviation "pct". For example, 45% (read as "forty-five percent") is equal to 45 / 100, or 0.45. Percentages are used to express how large/small one quantity is, relative to another quantity. The first quantity usually represents a part of, or a change in, the second quantity, which should be greater than zero. For example, an increase of $ 0.15 on a price of $ 2.50 is an increase by a fraction of 0.15 / 2.50 = 0.06. Expressed as a percentage, this is therefore a 6% increase. Although percentages are usually used to express numbers between zero and one, any dimensionless proportionality can be expressed as a percentage. For instance, 111% is 1.11 and -0.35% is -0.0035.

Fraction (mathematics)
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Jump to: navigation, search For other uses, see Fraction. Look up numerator in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A cake with one quarter removed. The remaining three quarters are shown. A fraction (from the Latin fractus, broken) is a number that can represent part of a whole. The earliest fractions were reciprocals of integers: ancient symbols representing one part of two, one part of three, one part of four, and so on.[1] A much later development were the common or "vulgar" fractions which are still used today (, , , etc.) and which consist of a numerator and a denominator, the numerator representing a number of equal parts and the denominator telling how many of those parts make up a whole. An example is 3/4, in which the numerator, 3, tells us that the fraction represents 3 equal parts, and the denominator, 4, tells us that 4 parts make up a whole. A still later development was the fraction, now called simply a decimal, in which the denominator is a power of ten, determined by the number of digits to the right of a decimal separator, the appearance of which (e.g., a period, a raised period (), a comma) depends on the locale (for examples, see decimal separator). Thus for 0.75 the numerator is 75 and the denominator is 10 to the second power, viz. 100, because there are two digits to the right of the decimal. A third kind of fraction still in common use is the percentage, in which the denominator is always 100. Thus 75% means 75/100. Other uses for fractions are to represent ratios, and to represent division. Thus the fraction 3/4 is also used to represent the ratio 3:4 (three to four) and the division 3 4 (three divided by four). In mathematics, the set of all (vulgar) fractions is called the set of rational numbers, and is represented by the symbol Q.

The decimal numeral system (also called base ten or occasionally denary) has ten as its base. It is the numerical base most widely used by modern civilizations.[1][2] Decimal notation often refers to the base-10 positional notation such as the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, however it can also be used more generally to refer to non-positional systems such as Roman or Chinese numerals which are also based on powers of ten.

In some contexts, especially mathematics education, the term decimal can refer specifically to decimal fractions, described below. In such cases, a single decimal fraction is called a "decimal", and non-fractional numbers, even when written in base 10, are not considered "decimals"