# Math Help - How to express hours as a percentage

1. ## How to express hours as a percentage

Firstly, this is most likely something I learned some 60 years ago but forgotten the basic principles so please accept my apologies if this is the wrong place to ask or much too basic for your forum.

x = normal hours per day (8)
y = Hours actually worked (4)

The employee is billed in days where x = 1.

I need a formula to calculate y as a percentage of x (0.50)

2. I guess the problem is when the time is in hh:mm:ss format?
If that's the problem note that a minute is 1/60 of an hour, so if you had 2h 34 min, you would add up 34 times the 1/60 part of an hour i.e.
$2h 34 min=2h+\frac{34}{60}h=2,57h$
If you had seconds then you would do a similar thing as seconds are 1/60 of a minute, i.e. 1/3600 of an hour. e.g.
$7h 35 min 3 sec=7h+\frac{35}{60}h+\frac{3}{3600}h=7,58h$
And of course, after you transform the hours into decimal form then you just calculate your usual percentage (y/x).

3. Originally Posted by Croat
I guess the problem is when the time is in hh:mm:ss format?
If that's the problem note that a minute is 1/60 of an hour, so if you had 2h 34 min, you would add up 34 times the 1/60 part of an hour i.e.
$2h 34 min=2h+\frac{34}{60}h=2,57h$
If you had seconds then you would do a similar thing as seconds are 1/60 of a minute, i.e. 1/3600 of an hour. e.g.
$7h 35 min 3 sec=7h+\frac{35}{60}h+\frac{3}{3600}h=7,58h$
And of course, after you transform the hours into decimal form then you just calculate your usual percentage (y/x).
No, it is whole numbers or at least it may be 4.5 hours or 2 hours, forget time.
I could say how do you calculate where 8 = 1 and 4 = .5?
I did say this was a simple problem so not dealing with real time.

4. percentage, P ...

$P = \frac{y}{x} \times 100$

5. Oh, it was just that. Sorry xD