Quandaries
and Queries
When calculating a percentage, if the formula is
A(new) - B(old)/A(new)
Is this percentage change or percentage increase?
Betty
Hi Betty,
Percentage change, percentage increase, percentage markup, percentage decrease, percentage reduction; all of these terms are used ambiguously at times. In many situations there is a time order as you indicate in your question with the words old and new. In this situation I think most people would say the percentage change is
(new - old)/old
100
that is you look at the change relative to where you started. If this is a positive number I would call it percentage increase, and if it is negative I would call it percentage decrease.
I don't know of a term for
(new - old)/new
Penny