Mrs lane took a survey of the types of pants her students were wearing. she collected the data of the types of pants her students were wearing, what percent of her students were wearing shorts? 10 were wearing jeans, 9 were wearing shorts and 2 were wearing capris.

It is always important to go through the given problem first to get a concept of the requiremement. Then all the information's available from the question has to be noted down in such a manner that there would be no need to look at the question while solving.
Total number of students wearing jeans = 10
Total number of students wearing shorts = 9
Total number of students wearing capris = 2
Then the total number of students surveyed by Mrs Lane = (10 + 9 + 2)
                                                                                            = 21
Now percentage of students wearing shorts = (9/21) * 100
                                                                       = (3/7) * 100
                                                                       = 300/7
                                                                       = 42.85 percent
So a total percentage of 42.85% of the students were wearing shorts.