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Supporting Australian Mathematics Project: Middle years.

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Year 6

Number and Algebra

Percentage discounts

Percentages are another way of expressing fractions with denominators that are ten, 100, 1000 and so on. Per centum is Latin, meaning 'out of 100'. So ten per cent or 10% means ten out of 100 and we write it as a fraction: \(\dfrac{10}{100}\).

Percentage is often used in retail to calculate discounts on items. It is a good way for the store to give the same proportional discount across a range of differently priced items. In the following pages you will investigate some strategies for calculating per centage discounts.