#math 101

by Arianna Ledesma, CAPS Math Tutor

The past 4 weeks I have been helping a lot of students on how to solve word problems with percentages, so although I would share a little formula I learned in my home country, Cuba. That little formula has saved my life so many times when taking a math class, so here it is:

P/T=%/100%

OK let me explain: In this equation P means part, T is total and % well, you are right it, it’s just %.

Now let’s do a sample problem so that you understand how it works!

Source

Problem #1:

In a Biology class only 80% of the the whole class passed the midterm exam. If there are a total of 60 students in the class. How many students passed the midterm?

First we need to find out what they are asking us. We want to know how many of the 60 students passed the midterm. So our total or T we know is 60 because there is a total of 60 students in the class. We know that our percentage is 80% because its given to us! Now we just need to plug in the number and solve for P or part which is what we are trying to find out. So the formula will look like this:

P/60=80%/100%

Secondly we use cross multiply to solve for P!

And that’s your answer!

Problem #2:

A student answered 80 problems on a test correctly and received a 95%. If all the problems were worth the same number of points, how many problems were on the test? Round your answer to a whole number. In this case we need to find the T = total of problems on the test:

And there you have it! There was a total of 84 questions on the exam.

Problem #3:

The Panthers softball team played in 60 games last season and won 36 of them. What percent of the games did they lose?

In this problem we have our total and our part so we need to find the percentage of the games lost by the team.

In this problem I am going to call the % “X” so that we don’t get confused.

I've heard they've changed Math 105 so it's harder now and they have to deal with multivariable calculus. Math 103's average was a lot lower than 101 or 105 when I took it, but because of the change in 105, it may be different now. 

Prof: Christian Quilalang. Kaano-ano mo si Zosimo Quilalang?

C: Kapatid.

Prof: Ahh. Kaya pala mag kamukha kayo.

(pagdating ni Chan sa board)

I took Math 103, and to be honest, it was a mistake...LOL. The Midterms and Final exams were really difficult, at least to me, and most of the people I spoke to. There were relevant applications to the Life Sciences, but do I even remember any of it? Nope! Do I even use calculus now? Nope, I just finished Biostatistics (Biol 300) and we never once used calculus. 

Back when I was taking integrals, Math 105 was suppose to be a breeze, their midterms averages were in the 80s while Math 103 was in the 50s haha, however, I have heard that they've changed Math 105 to make it more difficult. I've heard they've included multivariable calculus in it, but that was just through the grape vine. 

I think 101 is the only consistent one...LOL, but it really depends on the students, I assume most of the students who sign up for 101 are engineering students, so if you're comfortable with that fact then you should just stick to 101 haha.