To find the solution to this problem, you'll first want to convert the word problem to an equation. We can find key words in the word problem that will give us information about what we're doing and change the percentage into a decimal since both are ways to write numbers less than 1.
If we know that the word 'of' means we should multiply, we can write the equation like this:
12 = .25 * x
where x is the mystery number we are trying to find. Divide both sides by .25 to get x by itself (since any number divided by itself equals 1).
12 / .25 = .25 / .25 * x
12 / .25 = x
48 = x
To check our work, if you know that 25% is one quarter (1/4) of a whole, we can multiply 12 by 4 to find our whole.
