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Succeed with maths: part 1
Succeed with maths: part 1

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8 Facts and figures

When trying to cement these ideas, there is no substitute for practice. So before you finish for this week and move onto the weekly quiz, have a go at this final activity, which brings some of these ideas together. You can also try out your new skills when you see percentages and data that can be turned into percentages in your everyday life!

Activity 4 Commonwealth facts and figures

Timing: Allow approximately 10 minutes
Map of world with Commonwealth countries shaded in.

The Commonwealth in 2020 represented about 30% of the total global population. The global population is constantly growing, but an estimate of this in 2020 was around 7.23 billion (7 760 000 000) people. Bangladesh, a Commonwealth country, has an estimated population of 165 000 000.

Work out what percentage (to one decimal place) of the Commonwealth population lives in Bangladesh. Show this as a decimal and a fraction as well.

Hint: there is quite a bit of information contained in the question. You may find it helps to start by writing this all down in a list, as well as making a note of what you need to work out. Then you can think about where you need to start.

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Answer

The information that you have is as follows:

  • Commonwealth = 30% of world population.
  • World population = 7 760 000 000.
  • Population Bangladesh = 165 000 000.

You want to find the following:

  1. The percentage of the Commonwealth that lives in Bangladesh.
  2. Show this as a decimal and a fraction.

The first thing you need to do is work out the population of the Commonwealth – without that you can’t answer the question asked.

Population of Commonwealth = 30% of the population of the world

multiline equation line 1 equals 30 divided by 100 multiplication 7 760 000 000 line 2 equals 2 328 000 000

Now you have the information, you need to answer the question.

Percentage of Commonwealth living in Bangladesh = 165 000 000 divided by 2 328 000 000 multiplication 100 percent equals 7.1 percent (to 1 decimal place)

To convert this to a decimal, you just need to divide by 100.

7.1 % ÷ 100 = 0.071

To convert to a fraction, write as a fraction with 100 as the denominator.

This gives 7.1 divided by 100 . You wouldn’t usually show a fraction with a decimal number, but by multiplying the top and bottom by 10 you can resolve this issue, to give:

71 divided by 1000

So the final answer is that 7.1% of the population of the Commonwealth live in Bangladesh. This can be represented as 0.071 as a decimal and 71 divided by 1000 as a fraction.