Division between two negative numbers.

[marcel_olmo]

Hey guys. I'm getting some problems calculating some percentages about refunds of sales.

The point is, if I make a division between two negative numbers, the result is positive. And I'm getting a wrong result.

Is there some way I could know if I'm doing this kind of divisions?.

If I know that I only have to change the symbol (positive or negative) of the result, and it will be done.

Thanks in advance!!

Cheers!

[vgutkovsky]

Do you mean absolute value (i.e. you always want it to be positive)? If so, the function is fabs()

Regards,

[marcel_olmo]

Ok, here I leave you a real example with an image of a result. (first column is current year, second column is last year, and result)

For me this results are wrong, because you have to change the sign (+/-) of them. I mean, in the first one, I'm having a bad lecture, because I'm going worse than last year, so the result would be in red -28.42%.

How could I get it right?

Many thanks by advance.

Regards!!

[vgutkovsky]

Do you're dividing column(1) by column(2), subtracting 1, and treating that as a percentage? This is kind of confusing...what is this supposed to represent? And for the first row, why do you say you're doing worse than last year: -21.904 > -28.128, right? Maybe if I understood the business logic behind this, I could offer better advice.

Regards,

[montubhardwaj]

Hi,Let me know how you are calculating percentages i.e column(1)/column(2) or column(2)/column(1)

?

Regards,

Sharma

[fernandotoledo · Accepted solution]

THE CORRECT CALCULATION IS

( [ACTUAL] - [PREVIOUS] ) / FABS([PREVIOUS])

WHERE ABS() IS THE ABSOLUTE VALUE FUNCTION

[marcel_olmo]

Thank you guys. Your answers were very useful. It works fine.

Sorry for the delay because of the weekend.

See you around.