Finding the original amount
Is this correct? The cost of a train ticket from Manchester to London has risen by 25% to £109. Find the original cost of the ticket. 25% of £109 is £27.25 £109 - £27.25 = £81.75 So the original price is £81.75 ???
How can we check our answer? If we increase £81.75 by 25% we should get £109. Do we? 25% of £81.75 = £ (round to £20.44) Adding this to £81.75 gives £ What has gone wrong???
To get the correct answer use multipliers! The original price of the train ticket has been increased by 25% What is the multiplier to increase by 25% Original price x 1.25 = £109 (new price) We need to work backwards to find the original price The opposite of multiplying by 1.25 is dividing by 1.25 So the original price is £109 ÷ 1.25 = £87.20
Reductions… The price of a shirt has been reduced in a sale by 12.5% to £21. What did it originally cost? The multiplier to reduce by 12.5% is Original price x = £21 (sale price) Working backwards, the opposite of multiplying by is dividing by So the original price was £21 ÷ = £24