Final answer:
Values greater than 100% of an original value represent an increase, while values below 1% represent a significant decrease. Understanding percents, which use a denominator of 100, helps in making these comparisons. Percentages can sometimes exceed 100% when items are counted in multiple categories.
Step-by-step explanation:
When a value is greater than 100% of the original value, it indicates that the value has increased beyond the original amount. Conversely, when a value is less than 1% of the original value, it means that the value has decreased significantly, to a tiny fraction of the initial figure. To illustrate, if the original value is designated as a reference point of 100, then 200% would be double the original value, while 0.5% would be half of 1% of the original value, a very small portion.
Calculating percents is important in understanding these comparisons. A percent is a ratio with a denominator of 100, meaning that 100% represents the whole original value or a one-to-one ratio with the original. Therefore, more than 100% indicates multiplication of the original value, while less than 1% signifies a drastic reduction.
Additionally, it's worth noting that in some cases percentages may add up to more than 100% due to overlapping categories where items can be counted more than once, which is represented in a bar graph but not a pie chart.