Finding a 10% increase

Task

5,000 people visited a book fair in the first week. The number of visitors increased by 10% in the second week. How many people visited the book fair in the second week?

Solutions

Solution: Mental math

This task is appropriate for mental mathematics and students should be encouraged to think through the solution mentally. Students can easily find 10% of 5,000 and add 500 to 5000 arriving at the solution 5,500 people visited the book fair in the second week.

Solution: Computing the percent increase

There was a 10% increase, so multiplying 5,000 by 1.1 (in other words, 100% + 10%) will yield the result of 5,500 people visited the book fair in the second week