All Political Careers End In Failure
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My 10 year old daughter asked my wife this evening "Why do we use percentages, why don't people just use fractions?" Before I provide the answer we told her I thought I would open this out for discussion. Any advances on "... because fractions and decimals make people twitchy!"?
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.well, what's bigger, 2/7 or 13/50?
how about 29% or 26%?
with fractions, it takes a moment to see. whereas with percentages, they are easier to compare. 100 is a nice round number, and although 29/100 isn't precisely 2/7, it's near enough for most day-to-day purposes. plus, 34% looks neater than a fraction, particularly in the days of word-processing where there is no clear way to get most fractions.
plus, working with percentages saves all finding-a-common-denominator business which is quite time-consuming.