Video title

Converting Between Fraction, Decimals and Percentages

Speaker’s name
Coral Connor

Transcript
In this subject, we focus on maths in the media. Numbers can be expressed in different
formats and different people think more comfortably in either fractions, decimals or
percentages. If the person you’re speaking to thinks in a different format to you, you
need to be able to convert from one format to another to be able to understand what
they are saying. Media articles often switch between formats, even within the same
sentence sometimes. This can be done for emphasis but it makes evaluating their
claims difficult if you cannot convert.

Today I’m going to show you some simple examples so that you can check media
claims for yourself

Let’s look at some number that were in the media recently:

3 out of 5 people said they were affected by the recent fires in Australia.

That is 3/5 as a fraction

or 3/5 X 100% = 60% as a percentage. Remember that % means out of 100. Notice that
the percent symbol is a different way of writing 100.

or 60/100 as an unsimplified fraction

or 0.6 as a decimal.

57% as a decimal is 0.57.

If we round this to 1 decimal place then it becomes 0.6 as the digit in the second

16 March 2020 Postgraduate.Futures UTS CRICOS 00099F

 decimal place (7) is 5 or larger. In this case it is larger.

If we were to look at recent water levels in the Warragamba Dam, we see that they
increased from 43% full to 73% full within a few days. That is an increase of 30
percentage points.

We use the term percentage points to talk about the difference between percentages.

Now that you’ve learnt how to convert from one format to another why don’t you find
an article in the media that uses numbers and check their calculations using these
methods?

Happy converting!

University of Technology Sydney

University of Technology Sydney