Nam e: ______________________ Date: ________________

Validus Preparatory Academy 10th Grade Math Class

IWS3: Calculating Impact: Percent Change

As part of your subway design proposal, your group will be required to mathematically
calculate the impact that the new subway line will have on the overall system. In addition to
knowing things like how many people will ride your new subway line (something that we
already calculated), it is also useful to know how much of an impact this new line will have on
the overall system. If you are adding on a small line, the proposal will look a lot different than if
you are doubling the size of NYC’s transit system.

To show how much we impact the subway line, we will use a calculation called percent change.
To calculate percent change, you must subtract the old total value from the new total value,
and divide the difference by the old total value. The resulting decimal can then be multiplied by
100 to get the percent change. The value can be positive or negative, depending on whether
your value shrank or grew. Please use the formula below.

Percent Change =

EXAMPLE:
Our math class used to have 27 people in it. Recently, four more students were added.
Calculate the percent change.

The percent change in size of our math class was 14.8%

PROBLEMS:
1) Our math class went from 26 students to 30 students. What is the percent change?

2) Six people were dropped from the extended day math class, which started out with 20
students. What is the percent change? (hint: it will be negative, since I kicked people
out!)

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Validus Preparatory Academy 10th Grade Math Class

3) In 2006, Validus had 108 students. In the fall, we lost 6 sophomores and added 121
freshman. What is the percent change of the total number of students last year to the
total number of students this year?

4) In 2006, VPA had seven teachers. In the fall, we had seventeen. What is the percent
change?

5)
What is the percent change of each of the following categories of customer
satisfaction on the subway between 2003 and 2005?
a) Cost:

b) Value:

c) On time:

d) Station environment:

e) Safe/secure in cars:

f) Police in station:

g) Overall:

6) In general, is customer satisfaction going up or down for the subway? _____________

7) Which category of customer satisfaction went up the most? ______________________

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Nam e: ______________________ Date: ________________
Validus Preparatory Academy 10th Grade Math Class

8)
What is the percent change for each of the following categories for the bus system
between 2003 and 2004?
a. Cost:

b. Value:

c. On time:

d. Safe/secure:

e. Overall:

9) In general, are people more satisfied with the subway or the bus? _________________

10)
Between which two years did the Mean Distance Between Failure change the most,
given the information on the table above? _________________

What was the percent change between those two years? ________________________

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