Finding Sale Price

Date: 03/01/2002 at 10:33:19
From: Amnesty
Subject: Understanding and using percent

Hello,

We are studying how to find the sale price by subtracting the discount 
from the regular price. Can you help me?

Date: 03/01/2002 at 12:28:22
From: Doctor Peterson
Subject: Re: Understanding and using percent

Hi, Amnesty.

We have a number of answers to questions in this area, which you can 
find by going to our search page

    http://mathforum.org/mathgrepform.html   

and entering the key words from your question,

    price discount percent

Most of these deal with the reverse problem, finding the original 
price when you know the sale price. Here's a sample problem in the 
forward direction:

If the regular price is $8.99, and the item is being sold at 30% off, 
what is the sale price?

Well, 30% of $8.99 means 30/100, or 0.30, times $8.99:

    0.30 * 8.99 = 2.697

That much is being taken off the price, so the sale price is

    $8.99 - $2.697 = $6.293

which would be rounded down to $6.29.

Another way to do this would be to recognize that if 30% is being 
taken off, then what's left is 70%; so you can just multiply $8.99 by 
70% to get the sale price:

    0.70 * $8.99 = $6.293

If this isn't quite the kind of problem you are doing, or if I haven't 
helped where you need help, please write back and show me a specific 
problem and how you tried to do it. That way I can actually help you.

- Doctor Peterson, The Math Forum
  http://mathforum.org/dr.math/