I divide the little number by the big number and slide the decimal point over two.

Other mothers, is there a point where the daycare crud sort of calms down to an occasional evil, instead of constant tide of snot and coughing?

Emmett was sick once a week for the first three months he was in his first daycare. It sucked. In his second daycare there was about a two month transition period until he got used to the new germpool.

They get sick a lot that first year or so. On the plus side, he hardly ever gets sick now. But it was a real grind that first year.

You did get the bit where she said "math idiot," right?

Yeah.

Maybe if I explained in English:

what percentage 61.61 is of 205.37

61.61 is a fraction of 205.37. Percent means that it should be expressed as a fraction of 100. We'll let x stand for this unknown percent. These two fractions should be the same.

Of course, there's no getting 'round that algebra is now required.

I divide the little number by the big number and slide the decimal point over two.

But you don't always know that you should do that. i.e. it might be a case where the % is greater than 100.

eta: for some hypothetical precentage problem.

That's what I did, but I was attacked by sudden doubt.

you don't always know that you should do that. i.e. it might be a case where the % is greater than 100.

Well, that can be a different question, can't it?

Basically, for avoiding math terms, if you need to know what percent A is of B, divide A by B and bump the dot.

Okay, I just figure that 61 twice is about 122 - add another 61 and you're so close to 200 that it's probably about 30%.

I just remember the trick where "61.61 is a portion of 205.37, the same way that ?? percent is a portion of 100." YOu draw that as the aforementioned equation:

61.61/205.37 = ??/100

And then you do the criss-cross trick! top-left and bottom-right go together, and bottom-left and top-right go together (this is much easier to draw than to describe) so you end up with this:

61.61 * 100 = 6161 = 205.37 * ??

And then you divide both sides by 205.37.

6161/205.37 = (205.37/205.37) *??

Since anything divided by itself is 1, you end up with:

6161/205.37 = ??

And then you just type it into a calculator and find out it is actually 29.9995%! Which rounds up to 30 in a way that only makes really nitpicky people cry.

I have to sit down and draw out each step of this process sometimes. (Not all the time.) I am also the sort who, when converting feet to inches, sometimes have to do the little hand-gesture, "larger-to-smaller, multiply. Smaller-to-larger, divide." It's like the Watusi, except you can do it sitting down.

Can you tell it's almost tax time?

The cool thing about expressing such problems as a pair of fractions is that it works for all sorts of % problems.

Say you have 18 toasters. That's 57% of the number of toasters that you need. How many toasters do you need?

57% means 57/100. You have 18 out of a total of some unknown number. So,

57/100 = 18/x