Question

A newspaper reporter wrote an article about the amount of a toxin found in a river near a factory. In the​ article, the reporter incorrectly used 0.25 as the decimal form of1/4​%. What is the correct way to write 1/4% as a​ decimal? What did the reporter do​ wrong?

Answer 1

The correct decimal equivalent of 1/4% is 0.0025, not 0.25 as the reporter stated. The mistake happened because the conversion from percent to decimal was not acted upon properly.

Step-by-step explanation:

The correct way to represent 1/4% as a decimal is to understand that a percent is simply a number expressed out of 100. So, to convert a percent to a decimal, we divide it by 100. In this case, for 1/4%, which is equivalent to 0.25%, we would perform the following calculation: 0.25/100 = 0.0025. The reporter incorrectly used 0.25, which is actually the decimal form of 25%, not 1/4%. This mistake likely occurred because the reporter confused the fraction 1/4 with its decimal equivalent, which is indeed 0.25, but did not account for the percentage conversion.