A surprising and simple way to calculate percentages

An obvious example is percentages, which are present in everyday life and we see them when we go shopping or when measuring the fat content of a certain food in a weight loss diet.

There is a classic and very common way of calculating percentages, which is a simple rule of three formulas: multiply the initial amount by the percentage we want to calculate and divide all this by 100. An example is if we want to calculate 25% of 80, multiply 25 x 80 and divide by 100 (25×80/100).

However, a tweet from an American writer and editor Ben Stephens Four years ago, he opened the eyes of many with another effective way to calculate percentages, one that was much simpler for certain numbers. This does not require you to resort to a calculator and has been a huge success on social networks, receiving thousands of retweets and likes on the social network Twitter (Actual X).

The formula itself is as follows: X% of Y = Y% of X. exchange value (the order of factors does not change the product), it allows you to reverse the order of numbers in said calculation, thus speeding up the process of certain calculations. An obvious example is if we want 14% of 50, we can take 50% of 14 and it will give the same number, in this case 7.

This method is useful in everyday activities, such as knowing the true discounted price of a piece of clothing. If we know that a T-shirt is reduced by 10% and costs 25 euros, then we can easily calculate 25% of 10, which is a price reduction of 2.5 euros.

Reactions to the popular tweet ranged from those who were offended by what they considered to be an explanation of “such a simple concept” to those who were grateful for the demonstration of a principle that “should be taught in all schools.” It is obvious that in certain operations this is a trick that can be used to make quick calculations, especially when we do not have a calculator at hand or we want to use our intellect instead of resorting to technology.