When dealing with increases, markups, or profits that are greater than 100%, there is a good chance that your communication will be misunderstood. How, for example, would you interpret the following statement?

"The retailer has a markup of 200%."

It's not that this statement is ambiguous in mathematics. It clearly means that an item is sold for 3 times the wholesale price. For instance, if you buy an item for $50 and sell it for $150, then you marked it up $100, which is 200% of your wholesale price.

Even so, the problem is that many people think that marking up a wholesale price of $50 to $100 is a 200% markup. So, when talking about percents that are greater than 100%, you need to decide whether it is more important to be understood or to be correct.

To increase your chance of being understood, you should talk about the actual increases, not just the percent increases.

In 2007, The United States became the fourth-largest gold producing nation behind Australia, South Africa, and China. Click here to find out how much gold has been produced from your state.

The graph shows the price of gold from 1972 to 2010.

In the early 1980s, there was a short period of time in which speculation in price of gold was rampant. The price of gold quadrupled in just a few years.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon ended the U.S. dollar convertibility to gold and the central role of gold in world currency systems ended. The dollar and gold floated. In January 1980, gold price hit a record of $850 per ounce. This meant that the price of gold had quadrupled in just a few short years.

The price quickly dropped back down to around $400 per ounce, where it stayed for about 15 years. After falling even more in the early 2000s, it started to rise again. In early 2011, the price of gold had hit a record high of more than $1200 per ounce.