 Solving Percent Problems Using a Pyramid Grid A percent pyramid shows how to solve percent problems using a pyramid grid. Understanding Percent Problems A percent problem has three components, part, whole, and percent. The part is a portion of the whole, the whole is the total amount calculated, and the percent is a portion of 100 equal parts. In the sample problems at the end of this activity, two components will be given, and you will be asked to find the third component. Identify part, whole, and percent. What is the question? Step 1. Understand what the problem asks you to find. Example. 12 is what percent of 48? Does the problem ask you to find the part, the percent, or the whole? It asks you to find the percent. What information is given? Step 2. Understand what information is given in the problem. For our example, 12 is what percent of 48? We want to know which two components does the problem give? The part, the whole, or the percent? It gives the part, 12, and the whole, 48. Let's use the grid pyramid to solve the problem. Step 1. Draw a grid pyramid. Draw a horizontal division bar across the middle of the pyramid. Then draw a vertical multiplication bar down the pyramid. Step 2. Label the top section of the grid pyramid. Label the top section part. Step 3. Label the left section of the grid pyramid. Label the left section whole. Step 4. Label the right section of the grid pyramid. Label the right section percent. Step 5. Assign values. Extract the information given in the problem and plug it into the appropriate section. In our sample problem, we need to assign the pieces we know to the pyramid. 12 is the part, 48 is the whole, but how do we find the percent? Step 6. Perform the mathematical operation. Perform the mathematical operation that separates the two values that are given to find the missing value. For this problem, we'll do 12 divided by 48 to give us an answer of 0.25 or 25%. Try these sample problems on your own. Pause the video here and click play once you have tried all of the problems. For problem 1, the part is 27, the whole is 45, and it asks to find the percent, which is 60. For problem 2, the part is 9, the whole is 36, and it asks to find the percent, which is 25. For problem 3, the percent is 20, the whole is 50, and it asks to find the part, which is 10. You have completed this activity solving percent problems using a pyramid grid.