SOLUTION: A shopkeeper gives two successive discounts of 8% and 12%. What is overall discount? plz hlp me ans is 33.33%

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Question 295711: A shopkeeper gives two successive discounts of 8% and 12%. What is overall discount? plz hlp me ans is 33.33%
Found 2 solutions by jim_thompson5910, rfer:
Answer by jim_thompson5910(35256) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Let 'x' be the original price. If you apply an 8% discount, you're basically subtracting 8% of the original price from the original price. In other words, you're doing x-0.08x=0.92x


So after an 8% discount, the new price is 0.92x dollars. Now apply the 12% discount using similar logic to get 0.92x-0.12%280.92x%29=0.92x-0.1104x=0.8096x


So after applying the 8% discount, then the 12% discount, the final sale price is 0.8096x. Subtract the coefficient from 1 to get 1-0.8096=0.1904 and then multiply that result by 100 to get 19.04%


So the overall discount is 19.04%

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Example: Say an item originally costs $100. Apply the 8% discount to get 0.92%28100%29=92 (note: think of it as subtracting $8, 8% of $100, from $100). So after the first discount, the sale price is $92. Now apply the 12% discount to the new price of $92 to get 92-0.12%2892%29=92-11.04=80.96. This means that after the two discounts, the final price is $80.96


Instead of taking two steps to find the final discount, we can take a shortcut and simply apply the overall discount of 19.04% (we should get the same answer if we did things right). So applying the discount of 19.04% to the original price of $100 gets us 100-0.1904%28100%29=100-19.04=80.96 which is what got earlier. So this example helps support our answer. Try other values to confirm for yourself that this is the right discount. Try to incorporate real world values (ie prices you might see in the grocery store) to help you see that it works. As you can see, it's very useful to be able to combine multiple discounts into one to save time and avoid errors.

Answer by rfer(16322) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
pick an amount like $10, take 8% of it.
That equals $.90
10-.90=9.10
9.10*.12=1.09
total discount is $1.99
1.99/10=.199 or 19.9%