Solving Percentages: Remove 9% and Keep Total at 100%

[brandozz]

Hi all,

I'm a complete math idiot and was wondering if somebody could help me out with an equation that I'm trying to solve.

Lets say I have the following percentages that equal 100%

24.57%
44.59%
3.64%
18.20%
9%

Now let's say I want to remove the 9% but I want the remaining 4 numbers to still equal 100%. How would I distribute the 9% difference? I should also add, I don't want to divide the 9% by 4 and then equal distribute that among the numbers I want them to absorb according to their current percentage. If that makes any sense at all.

Thanks
-Brandon

 

[Mark44]

Hi all,

I'm a complete math idiot and was wondering if somebody could help me out with an equation that I'm trying to solve.

Lets say I have the following percentages that equal 100%

24.57%
44.59%
3.64%
18.20%
9%

Now let's say I want to remove the 9% but I want the remaining 4 numbers to still equal 100%. How would I distribute the 9% difference? I should also add, I don't want to divide the 9% by 4 and then equal distribute that among the numbers I want them to absorb according to their current percentage. If that makes any sense at all.

Thanks
-Brandon

First off, it's probably simpler to convert all of your numbers to decimal fractions, and get rid of the %. This makes your first four numbers
.2457
.4459
.0364
.1820

Now divide each of these numbers by .91, which will give you a new set of numbers that will add to 1.0. All of the numbers will be proportionally larger than what you started with.

 

[brandozz]

Thanks

Thanks for you help on this!