Forum Discussion
Delta % calculation
Can anybody help me im desperate!!
column A1 has a total 1500
column A2 is 0
column A3 is the delta (1500 - 0)
column A4 shows the percentage as #DIV/0!
cannot remember how this formula works
HELP
thank you
6 Replies
A1 would be the current total
A2 the previous totalA3 is the change from the previous value
A4 (the percentage change) is the delta divided by the previous total.
The calculation is correct but for very small or negative prior values A2, it is just not very useful. To suppress the error you could use a formula
= IF( A2>0, A3/A2, "not available" )
IMHO, it depends on business logic behind. If I had -$20 loss on previous year and have $100 this one, difference is $120 and formula shows "not available" for % difference.
Another point, if both A1 and A2 are zeros, usually % is shown as zero.
Without knowing the content formula is a bit abstract.
The advantage of %change is that it is scale invariant; it does not matter whether the denomination is $ or $M. Your delta of $120 may or may not be significant; a change from $1,000,000 to $1,000,120 is a drop in the ocean.
On the other hand, in your example where the base value is -$20 (a loss) the percentage change is -600%. To be honest, that means very little to me and I would sooner view the actual amounts.
HIJHill69
Delta function in excel, basically tests whether two values are equal. It returns 1 if both values are equal and returns 0 otherwise.
If you want to just compare values in A1 & A3 you can use =DELTA(A3,A1) or elaborate your requirements with example in excel sheet.
Thanks
Tauqeer
Hello tauqeeracma
i already got the delta thank you, i need to undertsand how to correctly formulate the % of the delta without getting the DIV/0 error when 1 cell is on zero
can you help me?
