Who Doesn’t Love a Good Clothing Sale?

1. Who Doesn’t Love a Good Clothing Sale? By Andrea Ingham

2. Today I’m going to the mall to go shopping for summer clothes. I’m going to my favorite store first because I heard there was a sale going on. I am going to use what I learned in math class to figure out how much things will cost with the sale! 1 2

3. If the price tag says $29.95 and it’s on sale for 40% off, how much do I save? Let’s do the math! Remember, it can be helpful to turn the percent into a decimal. This shirt is part of the sale! I’ve had my eye on it. Finally it is on sale. Should I get it? 3 4

4. I am definitely buying it because that means it’s only $17.97. I figured that out by subtracting the discount from the original amount: A quicker way to find the total would have been to multiply the original price by 0.60 because the shirt is 40% off so that means 60% of the original cost is left. 5 6

5. It will only cost $19.41. When calculating the tax, why did I add 1 to the tax rate? But wait…if sales tax is 8% here, how much will it cost? 7 8

6. I could have done: and then added the tax to the cost of the shirt: When I calculated the tax, I didn’t have to add 1 to 0.08, but it can make it easier. Adding 1 will allow me to only make one calculation instead of two. 9 10

7. I see a sign for buy one get one 60% off and you can mix and match any shirts. If I get another shirt, would that be a better deal? If I do the buy one get one for 60% off sale, I’ll get the first shirt for $29.95 and the second shirt for $11.98. All together that will cost $41.93 before tax. If I got two shirts both for 40% off that would cost $35.94 before. 40% off sale it is! 11 12

8. Let’s try estimating which is okay because I don’t need to be exact. I just want to know about how much it will cost. The shirt is still $29.95 with 40% off. Let’s round the original price of the shirt up to $30.00. What is 10% of 30? 10% of $30 is just 30 divided by 10 so it is $3. But the discount is actually 40%, so I can just multiply $3 by 4! This means the discount is about $12, which is pretty close to what we actually calculated. The original price minus the discount is about $30.00-$12.00 which is $18.00! So I can estimate that my shirt will cost $18.00 before tax!! 13 14

9. I’m glad I know how to find percentages so I get the best dealand estimate in my head! 15 16

10. Images from: Ae.com Istockphoto.com examiner.com Visitfingerlakes.com and Google images