6 percent of what number would be 3

Question

I have a question about percent calculation, I don't know the number.

6 percent of what number would be 3?

Can anyone answer the question with detail?

Answer 1

Lets start by thinking about what a percent actually is. Percent can be split in to two words: per meaning, well per, and cent meaning 100. So when you read percent, you should be thinking: per 100. So 6%= 6 per 100.

Now we've got another mathematical notation for that. $\frac{1}{100}$ also means 1 per 100. So when we say 6%, what we really mean is $6*\frac{1}{100}$ or $\frac{6}{100}$.

Since we know that the 6 percent of something (which we'll call $n$ for "number" so that we can keep things short) equals 3, we know that $\frac{6}{100}*n=3$. Then all we need to do is some algebraic rearranging to solve for our number $n$. Let's start by multiplying both sides by 100. Then $6*n=300$. Can you figure out what $n$ must be from here?

If you can't, here's another hint, though I strongly encourage you to try to solve the above problem first.

How about we try divide both sides by 6? Does that give us anything useful?

Answer 2

Hint:

Solve the equation used to calculate percentages:

$$\frac6{100}x=3$$