Question

Anthony measured a line to be 16 inches long. If the actual length of the line is 15.6 inches, then what was the percent error of the measurement, to the nearest tenth of a percent?

Answer 1

2.6%

Explanation:

You want to know the measurement error when an actual length of 15.6 inches is measured as 16 inches.

Error percent

The percentage error can be found from ...

(measured/actual -1) · 100%

(16/15.6 -1) · 100% ≈ 2.6%

The error in the measurement is about 2.6%.

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Additional comment

The positive value of the error percentage means the measurement is higher than the actual amount by that percentage.

Please note that we are not multiplying the error fraction by 100. Rather, we are multiplying it by 100% = 1. The purpose is to move the decimal point and add a % symbol to the decimal fraction.