Grade 10 Math · Reading rates
Money wears uniforms
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Money wears uniforms

Welcome to the money chapter — and here is the trick that carries the whole thing: read the unit before the number. Plain dollars ($24\$24) are a total — money, full stop. Dollars wearing a slash ($6/kg\$6/\mathrm{kg}) are a rate — money per something, and the slash is how it tells you. Kilograms with no dollars in sight (2.5 kg2.5\ \mathrm{kg}) are a quantity — the stuff itself.

And a percent? The % sign is a unit too — the per-hundred unit. 25% is not 25 dollars and not 25 kilograms: it is 25 out of every hundred of whatever it touches. That is its superpower and its trap in one: a percent means nothing until you know what it is a percent OF. No calculating this lesson — just look at each number's outfit and name it. The units will do the pointing all chapter long.