Question

in his garden, erik has 30 plants. 20% of the plants have pink flowers and 30% of the plants have red flowers and the remainder has no flowers. how many plants have flowers? find 2 different ways to solve this problem.

Answer 1

15 have no flowers, 6 have pink flowers, and 9 have red flowers.

Explanation:

If we add the percentages we get 50%. That means half of the plants (15 of the 30) have no flowers.

Since we have taken away half of the plants, we have to double the percentages. So 20% becomes 40% and 30% becomes 60%.

So now we get 40% of 15, which is 6, and 60% of 15, which is 9.

Another way of doing the last step is just subtracting the 6 from the 15 to get the 9.