We will first need to convert 25% to fraction form. There are 25 cents out of 100, and therefore, we can write 25/100. Now to find 25% of 20,000, we will also need to convert 20,000 to fraction form with the same denominator as 25/100.
20,000 = 20,000/1
As a rule of fractions, multiplying something in the numerator will mean you will have to multiply the same number in the denominator. And we need to multiply 100 to both the numerator and denominator in order to achieve the same denominator values for both fractions.
So we will get (20,000 * 100)/100 = 2,000,000/100
Now that we have both numbers in fraction form, multiply them together.
(25/100) * (2,000,000/100) = 50,000,000/10,000
From here, we will need to move the decimal point of 10,000 four places to the left, between 1 and 0 in order to have a denominator of 1. You will see why in just a moment. Since we are moving the decimal point four places to the left, we will need to multiply the numerator and denominator by 10^-4, or in other words, divide by 10^4, or 10,000, in which we will get:
(50,000,000/10,000)/(10,000/10,000) = 5,000/1 = 5,000
25% of 20,000 is 5,000