Question

A company manufactures water bottles. The list below describes the number of water bottles manufactured in three months.

• February: 4, 100 water bottles

• March: 7% more water bottles in February

• April: 500 more water bottles in March


What is the percent change, to the nearest percent, in the number water bottles the company manufactured from February to April. show your work

Answer 1

19%

Explanation:

You want the change from February to April if 4100 bottles were manufactured in February, 7% more were manufactured in March, and 500 more were manufactured in April.

Change

The change from February to March is given as 7%.

The change from March to April is 500 bottles. In terms of the February quantity, this is ...

500/4100 × 100% ≈ 12.2%

Then the total of changes from February to April is ...

change = 7% +12.2% = 19.2% ≈ 19%.

The number of bottles manufactured increased by about 19% from February to April.

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Additional comment

When working with percentages, one must always be aware of the base amount—what it is that represents 100%. Here, we know the 7% number for March uses the February value as its base.

Since we want a percent change from the February base, we can use that same base to find the percent difference from March to April. Then the total difference from February is the difference to March plus the difference from March to April.

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