From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

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Discount problems

Discount problems

From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

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Discount problems

- [Instructor] So another type of word problem you'll probably see on the GMAT is discount problems. So these are questions that involve increasing and/or decreasing numbers by percentages, sometimes multiple times. So let's look at an example one of these. Let's see, after I brought a 20% off any donut coupon to my local donut shop, the manager informed me that they were having a one-day sale. All donuts were marked 20% off before any coupons were applied. Pretty exciting. So if I bought a donut that normally sold for $3 that day and used my coupon, how much did I spend? So let's think about this. The key thing is we have to do percent changes one at a time. We cannot just turn the 20% and another 20% into 40% off. We have to do each thing separately. So if the donuts started off at $3 and it was marked down 20%, well, 10% of $3 is 30 cents. Therefore, 20% of $30 is 60 cents. So we would subtract 60 cents from $3. And when I walked in the door, that donut really was at $2.40. Now I'm…

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