I had to really think about a clever title for a blog post on percentages. The fact is, talking about percentage isn’t a particularly exciting topic. I thought about the movie “Anchorman” and the line, “..60% of the time, it works every time.”. But, that was difficult to sum up in a title. I also like to think about the old saying, “79% of all statistics are made up on the spot.” I have always enjoyed saying that to see what reactions I get, or to see if anyone is paying attention to what I’m saying. The truth is, percentages are pretty straight-forward, simple and extremely useful.
Percentages = Bling, Bling
When it comes to actually using percentages in the real world, I can’t think of where it might be used more than in the aspect of money. I like money, I’m sure you like money, so let’s understand how we earn, or lose money.
My Grandpa used to say, “Interest is great….if you’re on the right side of it.” Earning interest is much more fun than paying interest. Interest is a charge for the use of money. It is usually a percentage of the borrowed sum (principal), and it is computed over a period of time. This can be seen in many circumstances. You have mortgages on your property where you pay a percentage of the mortgage each month as a fee to borrow that money. The percentage, and a value of time, are used to calculate your monthly mortgage payment.
Pitch, Slope, and Angle
In construction, the angle of the roof is called the pitch. This pitch is denoted as rise-over-run. In other words, how far does the angle of the roof go up vertically for every unit you move horizontally. If you go snow skiing, you go to the slopes. A slope is similar to pitch, it is a measurement of an angle. How does percentage play into slope, pitch, and angle? If you take the rise and divide it by the run, that is your percent of slope. Angles are measured in percent, degrees, or radians. This is just a quick snippet of this subject, I won’t bore you on this right now.
Percentage Calculators
There are so many ways that percentages are used in calculations we use on a daily basis. And, since this website is dedicated to online calculators, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there are plenty of examples of calculators that utilize percentages in their calculations. If you get a moment and want to learn more about calculating a mortgage payment, or converting degrees of an angle to percentage of slope, or even if you want to figure out the percentage of humidity in the air, take a moment to browse through some of the percentage calculators on this website.