Lesson 16

In this lesson, students continue to examine repeated percent change and practice representing it with expressions. An important focus of the lesson is on distinguishing the effect of compounded percent change from that of simple percent change.

Students begin exploring this distinction geometrically by contrasting the outcome of scaling up the length of an image by 10% twice, versus scaling up the length by 20% once. They turn to a financial context next. Students investigate the effect on a savings account balance of calculating 1% interest every month for a year versus 12% once. In both cases, they see that the repeated application of a percent change yields a greater final change because, with each iteration, the value that is used to compute the percent increase grows. They learn that this process is called compounding.

Students critically examine the two ways of scaling an image and make a reasoned argument about whether the two results are equal (MP3). Students also look for equations to represent repeated interest calculations in the second activity (MP8).