In a room of 100 people, 99% are left-handed. How many people need to leave to bring it down to 98%?

50 lefties have to leave. The lone right hander should not leave. That leaves 1 RH and 49 LH. That gives (49 LH/ 50 total)x 100 = 98% LH

Fantastic!

Let's break this down step by step.

• Initially, there are 100 people in the room.
• 99% of them are left-handed, which means ( 99% \times 100 = 99 ) people are left-handed, and the remaining 1 person is right-handed.

We need to bring the percentage of left-handed people down to 98%. This means that the number of left-handed people needs to be 98% of the new total number of people in the room.

Let ( x ) represent the number of people who need to leave the room. After ( x ) people leave, there will be ( 100 - x ) people remaining in the room.

We know that, since no right-handed people are leaving, the number of left-handed people will still be 99, so we want:

[ \frac{99}{100 - x} = 0.98 ]

Now, solve for ( x ):

[ 99 = 0.98(100 - x) ]

[ 99 = 98 - 0.98x ]

[ 99 - 98 = -0.98x ]

[ 1 = -0.98x ]

[ x = \frac{1}{0.98} \approx 1.02 ]

Since the number of people must be a whole number, round up to ( x = 2 ).

Thus, 2 people need to leave the room to bring the percentage of left-handed people down to 98%.

ChatGPT say’s this

Haha - ChatGPT is useless when it comes to solving problems with logic. The correct answer is 50.

Let, x will be the person So remaining total person after removing = 100-x Remaining left handed person in room after removing=99-x Remaining left handed person in room = 98% (given in question) 99-x/100-x = 98/100 By solving above eqn we get x = 50 that is the answer.

New guy here ... Another non-algebraic way of looking at this (solve mentally is:

1. 99% of 100 people are LH means 99 are LH and 1 RH

2. We are only removing LH people, so the fraction of LH over total will always be (N-1)/N, i.e. the numerator will always be 1 less then the denominator

3. So we need a fraction where (N-1)/N = 0./98

4. Looking at the target of 98%, this is 98/100 (difference of 2)

5. Reducing this (divide top and bottom by 2), gives 49/50 which is a difference of 1

6. Initial LH was 99, target is 49, so 50 LH must leave the room.

7. so wha

If you really think 'hard', you can visualise that:

At 99% left-handed population, the room composition is: 100 people: 1 RH, 99LH At 98% left-handed population, the room composition is 50 people: 1 RH, 49 LH

Basically, it takes time to 'understand' that 1 RH person is now representing the 2% of the population; for which we need to take out 50 LH people.

Don't know how to simplify this further.

If i had to mislead people for money, this is the formula i will definetly use...