A chart shows incident types by hour; if 120 calls occur and 30 are alarms, what percent are alarms?

A chart shows incident types by hour; if 120 calls occur and 30 are alarms, what percent are alarms?

• A. 25%
• B. 20%
• C. 30%
• D. 40%

Answer: (A)

Finding the percent involves comparing the part to the whole and multiplying by 100. Here, alarms are 30 out of 120 total calls, so the fraction is 30/120. Simplifying gives 1/4, and 1/4 equals 25%. So 25% of the calls are alarms. If you compute other options as checks: 20% would be 24 alarms, 30% would be 36, and 40% would be 48, none of which matches the 30 alarms given.

Finding the percent involves comparing the part to the whole and multiplying by 100. Here, alarms are 30 out of 120 total calls, so the fraction is 30/120. Simplifying gives 1/4, and 1/4 equals 25%. So 25% of the calls are alarms. If you compute other options as checks: 20% would be 24 alarms, 30% would be 36, and 40% would be 48, none of which matches the 30 alarms given.