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# Small and Large Percents as Decimals

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Practice Small and Large Percents as Decimals
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Small and Large Percents as Decimals

Do you have a favorite color of jelly beans? Sasha loves red ones. Take a look.

Sasha loves jelly beans. In fact, she loves red jelly beans. When Sasha went to the candy store, she looked into a glass jar full of jelly beans and was shocked to discover that there were only a few red ones to be seen.

Because she was curious, Sasha bought a whole bag of the jelly beans.

When she got home, she counted $567$ jelly beans.

There were only $2$ red jelly beans in the whole bag.

Sasha wrote 2 out of 567 on a piece of paper.

Sasha wrote down $.3%$ .

Can you write this as percent as a decimal?

This Concept is about writing percents less than one as a decimal. You will learn how to do this in this Concept.

### Guidance

Sometimes, we will have a percent that is part of one whole. These percents are a decimal that is a tiny percent.

Let's look at one.

$.5%$

This is another way of saying $\frac{1}{2}$ of a percent. It is smaller than one.

We can also have a percent that is greater than one hundred. This is a very large percent-so large that it is larger than one whole.

Here is one of those percents.

$300%$

This percent is 300% or three times 100 percent. Wow! That is a large percentage!

Let’s look at changing these percents to decimals.

Think back, remember the steps?

1. Drop the % sign.
2. Move the decimal point two places to the right. Use zero placeholders as needed.

Now let's apply the steps.

Write $.5%$ as a decimal.

First, drop the percent sign.

$.5$

Next, move the decimal point two places to the left.

$.005$

The answer is $.005$ .

Write $350%$ as a decimal.

First, drop the percent sign.

$350$

Next, move the decimal point two places to the left.

$3.5$

Write each percent as a decimal.

#### Example A

$.25%$

Solution: $.0025$

#### Example B

$450%$

Solution: $4.5$

#### Example C

$675%$

Solution: $6.75$

Here is the original problem once again.

Sasha loves jelly beans. In fact, she loves red jelly beans. When Sasha went to the candy store, she looked into a glass jar full of jelly beans and was shocked to discover that there were only a few red ones to be seen.

Because she was curious, Sasha bought a whole bag of the jelly beans.

When she got home, she counted $567$ jelly beans.

There were only $2$ red jelly beans in the whole bag.

Sasha wrote 2 out of 567 on a piece of paper.

Sasha wrote down $.3%$ .

Can you write this as percent as a decimal?

To write this as a decimal, we can drop the percent sign and move the decimal point two places to the left.

$.3%$ becomes $.003$

### Vocabulary

Here are the vocabulary words in this Concept.

Decimal
a number written according to place value. Numbers to the right of the decimal point represent parts of a whole. Numbers to the left of the decimal point represent whole numbers.
Percent
a part of a whole out of 100. Percents can be smaller than one represented by a decimal percent. They can also be greater than one hundred by having a decimal with a whole number and a part of a whole.

### Guided Practice

Here is one for you to try on your own.

A company which produces light bulbs is very proud of the fact that only 0.02% of each shipment is defective. Write this percent as a decimal.

To write this as a decimal we simply follow the steps. First, drop the percent sign.

$.02$

Next, move the decimal point two places to the left.

$.0002$

### Practice

Directions : Rewrite each percent as a decimal.

1. .34%

2. .5%

3. 350%

4. 650%

5. .30%

6. .10%

7. .09%

8. .22%

9. 230%

10. 500%

11. 700%

12. .012%

13. .04%

14. .6%

15. .16%