On Tue, 23 Oct 2012 11:31:18 +0700, Olivier Nicole wrote: > Gary, > > On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 11:20 AM, Gary Kline <kl...@thought.org> wrote: > > > > apologies up front for this math type quandary. I had it in a std C program, > > but 3+ hours of grepping havent found it. I would have bet my last cent > > that I > > had a summary Somewhere, but cant find that either. > > > > here is the problem as best I can remember it. > > > > > > let's say that john is 8 and his older friend, jim, is 22. > > how much older is exact percentage terms is jim? > > That should be 22/8=2.75 > Jim is 275% older than John
Jim is 175% _older_. Why? Because 100% older means 16 years, as 100% refers to 8 years (8+8=16, 200% older is 8+8+8=24). Percentage is always a reference to something else, in this question, Jim's age in relation to John's. The word "older" means "adding percentage", refering to the base value of 8, "divided in 100 parts" (floating point considerations aside), to finally reach the value 22. If the question would be different, say, "What's the percentage of John's age regarding Jim's age?" In that case, it would be 8/22=0.3636 being 36%. Obvious: John's age is approximately 1/3 of Jim's age. The easiest way for creating the proper calculation is to refer to the equation percentage * 100 percentage value = ---------------- base value and resolve it to whatever is required. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"