Lesson 6: 6-6 Find the Whole Given a Part and the Percent

Property

When given a part and its corresponding percent, use the percent proportion $\frac{\text{part}}{\text{whole}} = \frac{\text{percent}}{100}$ and solve for the whole by rearranging to $\text{whole} = \frac{\text{part} \cdot 100}{\text{percent}}$.

Examples

Property

When a percent is greater than 100%, the part is greater than the whole.
The equation percent * whole = part is still used, but the percent is converted to a decimal greater than 1.
This means the whole ($w$) is found by dividing the part ($a$) by the percent as a decimal ($p$):

Examples