Percentage

A percentage is a proportion of a whole, the word percent literally means out of 100. But the whole doesn't itself need to be 100. For example. 50% of 100 is 50 but 50% of 500.

A percentage allows us to express how much of a whole we want to represent using an easy to understand number between 0 and 100.

There are several ways of calculating the percentage of a particular amount but the one I prefer is:

total / 100 * percentage amount

For example if you wanted to find 15% of 264 this would become:

264 / 100 * 15 = 39.6

This can also be expressed as:

264 x 15% = 39.6