The term 'percentage' is ubiquitous, to say the least. From promotional labels like extra items in a product pack and price discounts to fixed deposit rates, yearly appraisals, negotiating better cost-to-company (CTC) with HR and assessing students' performance in a class exam, the usefulness of percentage numbers is evident everywhere in our daily lives.
Now,
how to calculate percentage of marks of 12th class? What percentage of marks does a student need to pass the exam? Which of your scores will be taking the final cut-off for admission to colleges? Do you know how to calculate a percentage number quickly or make meaning out of percentage numbers? If not, don't worry. This article is here to help you with that. We will discuss the different methods to calculate the percentage of marks efficiently. Read on and get ready to ace your next test.
Do you think it is easy to calculate the percentage?
It is reasonably easy for a secondary student to calculate the answer to "what is 10% of INR 500". However, let us consider calculating cut-off marks for securing admission or passing a competitive exam for government jobs. Another critical use case of percentage is calculating take-home salary from the jungle of CTC numbers. That is because, INR 10 lakh per annum CTC may not be as lucrative as an INR 8 lakh per annum CTC. Surprised? Well, you need to deduct numerous benefits and statutory tax-related savings to reach the ultimate and comparable net or take-home salary.
What is a percentage?
Now, a percentage is a number that shows the relative amount of something. For example, if a person earns INR 50,000 annually and their friend earns INR 25,000 annually, the first person earns 150% as much as their friend. Here, 150% means INR 50,000 is 50% more than INR 25,000. A percentage is always expressed as a fraction of 100. A percentage can also be understood as the amount of a total that is related to a certain number. For instance, if you earn INR 15,000 annually and spend INR 5,000 on your rent, your rent makes up nearly 33% of your income. In this case, 33% means that the total amount of your rent is 33rd part of your total income.
Advantages of understanding percentage
For students, job seekers, professionals, the general public and homemakers, understanding the concept of 'percentage' and how the idea is applied in different use cases is a fundamental life skill. Some of the salient benefits of clarity and usability of the percentage concept are,
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Better self-assessment of performance in any class and board examination.
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Easy to set a targeted score for securing admission to coveted academic programmes, institutes, and universities.
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Effective decision-making about accepting a job offer or negotiating better appraisals from HR managers.
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Empirical comparison and identification of the best deals in any consumer or business purchase decisions.
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Effective personal financial decision-making like securing the cheapest loans, best bank rates and calculating the rate of return on investments.
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Practical evaluation of competitors and finalising competitive product pricing in any business.
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Functional trend analysis through calculation of the percentage of growth or decline in an incident over time.
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Practical understanding of applying statutory taxation rates (GST, Income tax, VAT), accounting practices and financial disclosures.
How to calculate percentage?
Knowing how to calculate percentages is a must whether you want to build a career in business, advertising, public relations, or any other job dealing with numbers. If you need to calculate your company's sales figures, you should know how to calculate the percentage easily. You can calculate the percentage by dividing the amount by the total and then multiplying the ratio by 100. Let's see how to calculate the percentage for each scenario.
Scenario 1: How to calculate total percentage of marks?
Suppose you want to find out the percentage of marks for different subjects in a written exam that you took. Example - scored 90 out of 100 in maths, 70 out of 90 in statistics and 65 out of 80 in physics. Here are the steps you can follow: -
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Calculate the total marks by adding up the individual marks obtained in 3 different subjects. In this case, you earned a total of (90+70+65) or 225 marks.
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Calculate the total marks for all the subjects. In this case, it is (100+90+65) or 255.
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Calculate the fractional value of total marks obtained over the total marks available for all the subjects in the written test. In this case, it is {(90+70+65) / (100+90+65)} or 0.8823 (up to four decimal points).
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Now, for calculating the percentage of marks obtained, you need to multiply the fractional value by 100. In this case, 0.8823*100 = 88.23%.
Scenario 2:
Suppose you own a trading business and want to determine the profit percentage in your company's total sales for any time period (week, month, year or a specific period). Here are the steps you can follow:
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Identify the cost of purchase of goods for the specific period (say, January 2022). Example: INR 100000 for the 1st week, INR 80000 for the 2nd week, INR 95000 for the 3rd week and INR 75000 for the 4th week of January 2022. The total cost of the purchase in January 2022 was INR 275000.
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Calculate the total weekly sales by adding up the sales revenue figures. In this case, they can be INR 110000, INR 85000 and INR 96000. The total of January 2022 sales was INR 291000.
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The profit out of total sales from the trading business was (291000 - 275000) or INR 16000. The fraction of profit out of sales is (16000 / 291000) or 0.0549 (up to 4 decimal points).
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To calculate the profit percentage, you need to multiply the profit ratio or fraction with 100, which is (0.0549*100) or 5.49%.
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The calculation could have been more complex if we had factored in purchase discounts, credit sales, credit purchases and other factors.
Using formula for calculating the percentage of marks
Let us now have a quick look at how to calculate percentage of marks formula. This formula can be equally useful and applicable to other types of percentage calculations. Here, A = Marks Obtained, B = Total Marks. For example, if you earned 60 out of 80 marks in your exam, the formula will be as follows:
Using a calculator to find out the percentage of marks
Electronics calculators can make simple arithmetic calculations a child's play. Most calculators have a specific function to calculate the percentage of marks instantly. You can take advantage of this feature and calculate the percentage of marks in just a few seconds. The following steps will show you how to do that:
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First, open the calculator on your phone or computer.
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Next, enter the marks you obtained in the calculator. In our example, 60 is the mark you got in the exam.
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Now, enter the total marks in the calculator. In our example, 80 is the total marks in the exam.
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Next, click the percentage button on the calculator. The calculator will find out the percentage of marks for you. In our example, it will show 75%.
Using an online tool to calculate the percentage of marks
If standalone calculators are magical, computer applications on PC, smartphones and tablet devices are like wizards for accomplishing any type of repetitive mathematical tasks. For example, you can plot complex formulas once and enter your number as many times as you want to calculate percentage values.
There are several offline and online tools for calculating percentages using your computer, like,
Benefits of using online tools
There was a time when statisticians used to rely on the abacus to calculate basic percentage changes in variables. Calculators have reduced that workload significantly. Also, computer-based online and offline tools have increased the scope of delivering and collaborating complex calculations by leaps and bounds.
The benefits of using online tools for calculating percentages are:
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Plotting complete formula with multiple variables and parameters is easy
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Handling large data sets automatically instead of manually inserting numbers is possible
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Easy to review and identify errors in large calculations
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Building connections across various data sets is easy
Finally, do you know how to calculate percentage of marks formula in Excel? It is easy. The basic formula is “=part/total”; insert the part value in a cell and total value in another cell. Select both the cells and plot formula for the list of excel functions.
Finally
Knowing how to calculate percentage of marks or any other percentage value is a must for anyone–be it a student, businessperson, people who want a career in business, advertising, public relations, or any other job that involves crunching numbers. Suppose you need to calculate the sales figures of your company. In that case, you will need to know how to calculate the percentage and explain the implication of the percentage numbers to your stakeholders. The same is true for students. The percentage change in your performance is the most straightforward indicator of your success to your parents, teachers, institutes and employers. So, hope this article helped you understand percentages and how to calculate them easily.