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### A Predicament With Percents (Weekly Brain Potion)

A Predicament With Percents (Weekly Brain Potion)

Welcome back to the Weekly Brain Potion series for the 2018-19 School Year! This year we're asking for your requests, ideas, and feedback for the series in our Request and Idea Thread available here.

We're starting off this year with a concept we've all heard of, percents.

To start us off, let's quickly run through the following calculations, giving all your answers as decimals.

1. $5\% = ??$
2. $5\% \times 200 = ??$
3. $200\times 5\% = ??$
4. $5\% + 200 = ??$
5. $200 + 5\% = ??$

Even though these calculations may seem simple, let's check our answers using some calculators. We'll be using two calculators:

Both calculators should give us expected answers for $5\%$. Use this as a way to get comfortable with using each of the calculators.

Let's next explore questions 4) and 5). What answers do you get using the calculators? Both calculators should give you the same answers, but the answers might surprise you! (Be sure to always end with "=" when using the office calculator). Think about real world applications involving percents. Can you explain the answers given by the calculators in terms of these applications?

Finally we look at questions 2) and 3). What answers do you get using the calculators? This time the calculators might give different answers! (Again, be sure to always end with "=" when using the office calculator). Do these answers make sense? Can you explain where the answers come from?