All ACT Math Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #1 : How To Find The Whole From The Part With Percentage
Ed eats 3 cookies every day. If he increases the total amount of cookies he has to begin with by 50%, it would take 21 days to finish all of his cookies. How many cookies does he have to begin with?
63 cookies
21 cookies
42 cookies
12 cookies
42 cookies
We let T be the total amount of cookies and D be the number of days it takes to eat all of the cookies before increasing by 50%, and A be the number of days after increasing by 50%. With the information given, we can write the expressions, T=3D and 1.5T=3A. For the second equation, we know A=21. We plug in and get T=42.
Example Question #4 : How To Find The Whole From The Part With Percentage
There are 8 blue balls in a bag. 40% of all the balls in the bag are blue. How many total balls are in the bag?
8
4
12
20
2
20
You evaluate 8/0.4 = 20.
Example Question #1 : How To Find The Whole From The Part With Percentage
95 is 20% of what number?
400
475
550
500
475
multiply the part times 100 then divide by the percent.
(95 x 100) / 20 = 475
Example Question #1 : How To Find The Whole From The Part With Percentage
If of a number is , what is of the number?
Since of the number is , the number is which equals . Then calculate of :
.
Example Question #1 : How To Find The Whole From The Part With Percentage
Gwen has a collection of 1,000 books. The average thickness of each book is 1.25” thick. She wants to buy enough bookshelves that all of her books will fit on it.
What is the shortest length of bookshelf she should buy, in whole feet, to fit all her books?
125 feet
110 feet
120 feet
105 feet
115 feet
105 feet
Length of books = 1,000 books x 1.25” per book = 1,250”
Translate to feet
1” = 12’
1250” / 12 = 104.16 feet
Round up to 105 feet to be able to fit all the books.
Example Question #2 : How To Find The Whole From The Part With Percentage
Nathan spends of his total homework time on Math. He spends one hour on Biology homework, which is twice the amount of time that he spends on Math. What is the total amount of time, in minutes, that Nathan spends on homework?
If minutes of Biology () is twice as much time as that which is spent on Math (), then Math must equal 30 minutes.
, so .
minutes is equivalent to of the total time ():
Solve for by dividing both sides of the equation by .
Example Question #2 : How To Find The Whole From The Part With Percentage
A bowl contains marbles that are either red or green. The probability of selecting a red marble at random from the bowl is
Which of the following expressions represents the total number of red marbles in the bowl?
It’s best to start with a fraction that is a part over 100. For this problem, we are looking for a fraction that shows . If you go through the choices available, . Therefore, if you plug in any value for “X” in this fraction, you will know the total number of marbles in the bowl. Here is an example:
If there are 4 marbles in the bowl, you’d expect 1 to be red. If we use this equation, we get