A Point about Percentages
Percentages are in the news a lot these days, with many national elections taking place. See if you can correctly distinguish between differences in percentages by choosing an answer for the sentence below.
If a candidate's support decreased from 40% to 30%, how much did it fall?
10% or 10 percentage points
10% or 25 percentage points
25% or 25 percentage points
25% or 10 percentage points
The correct answer is the fourth one. A drop from 40 to 30 is a decrease of 25% of the total amount, but a decrease of 10 as far as total percentage points. Be careful to keep these two things straight when calculating differences in percentages.