Question

The number of lime flavored gumballs in the gumball machine is 85. If this is 17% of the number of gumballs in the machine, how many gumballs are in the machine?

Answer 1

The total number of gumballs is 500.

Explanation:

Percent means per hundred.
Therefore, `17% = 17/100 = 0.17`

Let the total number of gumballs be n. Then

17% of n = 85 means that

`0.17*n = 85`

`n = 85/0.17 = 500`

I hope this helps,
Steve