Among other things, the text of a math question states:
Employed people are $25$% less likely to watch $10$h or more of TV in a week.
Other data necessary for the calculation is given in a table accompanying the question. I have not provided it, as it is not central to the issue at hand.
The puzzling bit is the end result and a part of the explanation of how to arrive at it:
Assume that the population of Belgium is $B$. Then the number of people who watch more than $10$ hrs of TV is:
$$\frac{59.8 \times B}{100} = 0.598B $$
The number of people who are employed who are within this group would normally be:
$$0.427 \times 0.598B = 0.255B$$
But the employed group are $25$% less likely to be in this group, correct? How do we translate this information into a calculation?
What this essentially tells us is that if the number of employed people who watch $10+$ hours of TV was $25$% higher, that is when their number would be exactly as we calculated above:
$$X (\text{number of employed TV watchers}) \times 1.25 = 0.255B$$
Let's rearrange our equation again to have × only on one side:
$$ X (\text{number of employed TV watchers}) = \frac{0.255B}{ 1.25} $$
What's puzzling me is: doesn't "$25$% less likely" mean $75$%, so the calculation would be:
$$ X (\text{number of employed TV watchers}) = 0.255B × 0.75?$$