Using 100 as your starting point was a good idea. It's important to realize that the question is essentially asking for Mary's income/Juan's income. Because this is a percent problem and Juan's income is the denominator, I made his income 100. Then I just worked backwards.

If J = $100, then T = $60 (forty percent less than 100 is 60 percent of 100.)

If T = $60, then M = 60 X 1.6 = $96.

Thus, $96/$100 shows you that M's income is 96% of J's income.

Hope this helps....good luck on the test!

fajoni wrote:Using 100 as your starting point was a good idea. It's important to realize that the question is essentially asking for Mary's income/Juan's income. Because this is a percent problem and Juan's income is the denominator, I made his income 100. Then I just worked backwards.

If J = $100, then T = $60 (forty percent less than 100 is 60 percent of 100.)

If T = $60, then M = 60 X 1.6 = $96.

Thus, $96/$100 shows you that M's income is 96% of J's income.

Hope this helps....good luck on the test!

This is a good way of tackling this question. The key here is to understand what the question is asking.

Another approach is to solve this algebraically.

Assign variables:
m = mary income
t = tim income
j = juan income

"Mary's income is 60 percent more than Tim's income" can be written as:
m = 1.6t
"Tim's income is 40 percent less than Juan's income" can be written as:
t = 0.6j
"what percent of Juan's income is Mary's income?"
x/100 = m/j (where x is the percent we are looking for)

We can use "t = 0.6j" to find j ----> j = t/0.6.

plug-in the values for m and j ------> x/100 = 1.6t / (t/0.6)
cross multiply ------------------------> (x)(t/0.6) = (1.6t)(100)
simplify -------------------------------> xt/0.6 = 160t
multiply both sides by 0.6 (or 3/5)-> xt = 96t, so x = 96

This is just another approach ... but I would use Fajoni's approach for this. Much easier and quicker.