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Math Lesson, Percents, %

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at the store.

Girl:  OOoh, it’s 20% off!
Girl’s friend:  And I have a 20% off coupon!
Girl:  OMG, that makes it 40% off!

Let’s talk about this.  First, I sort of hope you know that the previous conversation was wrong.  Any math teacher would be very disappointed.  Second, do you think this would work if it was 50% off with a 50% off coupon….most of the time, stores like to get money for their merchandise (although that Coupon show on TLC would make you think otherwise).

Let’s look at an example:

Super cute shoes = $100

20% off = 0.20*100 = $20, so the shirt now costs $80 (a fancier way to do that would be -> $100*(1-0.20)

You have a super awesome coupon for an additional 20% off.

0.20*80 = $16, so the shirt now costs $64 ($100-$20-$16).  Which is a screamin’ deal.

If the shirt was 40% off, there would be a discount equal to 0.4*100 = $40.  A final cost of $60.

$60 is not the same as $64.

If you wanted to do the calculation in one gigantic mathematic orgy, it would look like:

$100*(1-0.2)*(1-0.2) = $100*0.8*0.8 = $64

Ok, happy Thursday. Next week we can talk about mental math and tipping.

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