Percentages from Data

Date: 4/12/96 at 16:53:17
From: Wolf
Subject: percentages

Dear Dr. Math

I am trying to figure out several things.  I have totaled the 
number of men and women responding to 4 different newsgroups; an 
all-male group, an all-female group, and 2 mixed-sex groups. 

I have also totaled their use of swear words, by board and by sex.  
What I want to know is how to figure out who's swearing more, men 
or women, percentage-wise.  I can't think of how to do the 
percentages.  So I guess my questions for you are how to do the 
percentages for:  who swears more, men or women?  How do the 
swearing patterns change when moving from single-sex to mixed-sex 
boards?  This is driving me nuts.  *Please* help me if you can.  

Thank you very much,
wolf@gower.net

Date: 4/17/96 at 19:57:17
From: Doctor Jodi
Subject: Re: percentages

A percentage is just a fraction with 100 on the bottom:

1 percent = 1/100

So what you need to do is figure out WHAT statistics you want - 
number of curse words per person, number of curse words per 
message, whatever.

Then you make this ratio into a fraction.  Say it's 

1/6

You want to find an equivalent fraction with 100, instead of 6, 
in the denominator.

So you ask:

1 = ?
-   -
6   100

Now let's name the unknown x and rewrite that...

1  =  x
_     _
6     100

Now we can solve this algebraically by multiplying both sides by
100:

1                x
_   * 100  =     _     * 100
6                100

100
___    = x
6

Now let's reduce 100/6 to lowest terms to get 50/3.
We can also rewrite 50/3 as 16 2/3.

So 1/6 is the same as 16 2/3 percent.

Does this make sense to you?  Good luck with your project!

-Doctor Jodi,  The Math Forum