How to find the area of a square - ISEE Upper Level Quantitative Reasoning

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Question

A square is made into a rectangle by increasing the width by 20% and decreasing the length by 20%. By what percentage has the area of the square changed?

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Answer

The area decreases by 20% of 20%, which is 4%.

The easiest way to see this is to plug in numbers for the sides of the square. If we are using percentages, it is easiest to use factors of 10 or 100. In this case we will say that the square has a side length of 10.

10% of 10 is 1, so 20% is 2. Now we can just increase one of the sides by 2, and decrease another side by 2. So our rectangle has dimensions of 12 x 8 instead of 10 x 10.

The original square had an area of 100, and the new rectangle has an area of 96. So the rectangle is 4 square units smaller, which is 4% smaller than the original square.

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