5: Decimals, Fractions and Percents
This chapter is from the Support Course for Elementary Statistics by Larry Green from Lake Tahoe Community College and includes sections from other open-source textbooks.
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- 5.1: Comparing Fractions, Decimals, and Percents
- In this section, we will go over techniques to compare two numbers. These numbers could be presented as fractions, decimals or percents and may not be in the same form. For example, when we look at a histogram, we can compute the fraction of the group that occurs the most frequently. We might be interested in whether that fraction is greater than 25% of the population. By the end of this section we will know how to make this comparison.
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- 5.2: Converting Between Fractions, Decimals and Percents
- In this section, we will convert from decimals to percents and back. We will also start with a fraction and convert it to a decimal and a percent. In statistics we are often given a number as a percent and have to do calculations on it. To do so, we must first convert it to a percent. Also, the computer or calculator shows numbers as decimals, but for presentations, percents are friendlier. It is also much easier to compare decimals than fractions, thus converting to a decimal is helpful.
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- 5.5: Using Fractions, Decimals and Percents to Describe Charts
- Charts, such as bar charts and pie charts are visual ways of presenting data. You can think of each slice of the pie or each bar as a part of the whole. The numerical versions of this are a list of fractions, decimals and percents. By the end of this section we will be able to look at one of these charts and produce the corresponding fractions, decimals, and percents.