# Oh Wise and powerful Teaming Millions: Percentages question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 21, 2007, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-wise-and-powerful-teaming-millions-percentages-question/430835 "2007-12-21T16:09:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2007, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-wise-and-powerful-teaming-millions-percentages-question/430835/1 "2007-12-21T16:09:04Z")
Man do I feel stupid, and whenever I feel stupid I know where to come to help alliviate myself of this wretched feeling. I’m working in excell and I have a list of numbers that equal 200: 15.96025695 1 2 150.5746404 9.312442396 4.011059908 2 15.14160034 The percentages of each number are therefore: 0.079801285 0.005 0.01 0.752873202 0.046562212 0.0200553 0.01 0.075708002 I need to lower the percentage of the fourth number from 75% to %66 AND have the remaining percentages still add up to 100%. So this is where I am: ??? ??? ??? 0.66 ??? ??? ??? ??? Not very good. How do I determine what the percentages for the other numbers should be? I know the answer is very simple, but I’m drawing a blank. PS: this is not homework! ---
**Author:** ![jk1245](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/49beb7/32.png) [@jk1245](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jk1245)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2007, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-wise-and-powerful-teaming-millions-percentages-question/430835/2 "2007-12-21T16:12:56Z")
Do you mean you want the “extra” spread evenly among the remaining numbers? Then is would just involve adding 1.3% to the other numbers. (1.3% is the 9% you are removing from the 75% to get to 66% divided among the other 7 values) ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2007, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-wise-and-powerful-teaming-millions-percentages-question/430835/3 "2007-12-21T16:21:45Z")
If you want to change only the fourth number, while leaving all the other numbers the same, so that the fourth number is now 66% of the total instead of 75% (and the new total, of course, will no longer be 200), the fourth number needs to be 95.94334509. Here’s how I got that: Call the fourth number x. The other numbers add up to 49.42535959, so the total will be x + 49.42535959. You want the fourth number to be 66% of the total: this means you want x = .66(x + 49.42535959). Solving this for x yields x = 95.94334509. ---
**Author:** ![ArmenE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e9bcb4/32.png) [@ArmenE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ArmenE)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2007, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-wise-and-powerful-teaming-millions-percentages-question/430835/4 "2007-12-21T16:29:26Z")
First, let me point out that the numbers you posted aren’t percentages. They’re percentages divided by 100, so they range from 0.0-1.0, not 0-100. The question you ask is sort of up to interpretation. As I understand it, you should do the following: When you change 150.5746404 to be 66% of the total, 200, you get 132. Now that means that the rest of the numbers now take up 34%, not 25%. That means you’ll want to increase each number by a factor of 34/25, or 1.36 So you’ll get 1.36 \* 15.96025695 1.36 2.72 134 (66 percent of total) 1.36 \* 9.312442396 1.36 \* 4.011059908 2.72 1.36 \* 15.14160034