Question

the U.S. Census Bureau states that in 2010 the average commute time for Wake County workers was 23.9 minutes and in 2016 the average was 25 minutes. What was the percentage increase in average commute times between these years? Write your answer as a percentage rounded to two decimal places, but do not include the % symbol.

Answer 1

Answer:  4.60%

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Explanation:

We'll ignore the year numbers (2010 and 2016).

The difference in time values is 25-23.9 = 1.1 minutes

Divide this over the first time value to get (1.1)/(23.9) = 0.046025

Moving the decimal point over to the right 2 spots gets us 4.6025% which then rounds to 4.60% when rounding to two decimal places.

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As a way to verify the answer:

4.60% of 23.9 = 0.046*23.9 = 1.0994

Increasing by 4.60% means the time value has increased by roughly 1.0994 minutes. So we go from 23.9 to 23.9+1.0994 = 24.9994 which is fairly close to 25 minutes. There's a bit of rounding error, but we have effectively confirmed the answer.