What is the difference between 100 and 30

For now, let's see a couple of examples where it is useful to talk about percentage difference. Let's say you want to compare the size of two companies in terms of their employees. In this example, the company C has 93 employees, and company B has To compare the difference in size between these two companies , the percentage difference is a good measure. In this case, using the percentage difference calculator, we can see that there is a difference of One key feature of the percentage difference is that it would still be the same if you switch the number of employees between companies.

As we have established before, percentage difference is a comparison without direction. It is, however, not correct to say that company C is In this case, we would be talking about percentage change, which is not the same as percentage difference. Another problem that you can run into when expressing comparison using the percentage difference, is that, if the numbers you are comparing are not similar, the percentage difference might seem misleading.

Imagine that company C merges with company A , which has 20, employees. Now the new company, CA , has 20, employees and the percentage difference between CA and B is Let's take it up a notch. We're not quite sure what this company does, but we think it's something feline related. CAT now has Now, the percentage difference between B and CAT rises only to The reason here is that, despite the absolute difference gets bigger between these two numbers, the change in percentage difference decreases dramatically.

The two numbers are so far apart that such a large increase is actually quite small in terms of their current difference. Therefore, if we want to compare numbers that are very different from one another, using the percentage difference becomes misleading. If you want to avoid any of these problems, our recommendation to only compare numbers that are different by no more than one order of magnitude two if you want to push it.

If you want to learn more about orders of magnitude and what this term means, we recommend our scientific notation calculator.

As with anything you do, you should be careful when you are using the percentage difference calculator , and not just use it blindly. In our example, the percentage difference was not a great tool for the comparison of the companies CAT and B. At the end of the day, there might be more than one way to skin a CAT but not every way was made equally. And we have now, finally, arrived at the problem with percentage difference and how it is used in real life, and, more specifically, in the media.

The percentage difference is a non-directional statistics between any two numbers. However, when statistical data is presented in the media, it is very rarely presented accurately and precisely.

Holiday sale and property taxes, presidential ballot and lottery winning probability, chemical substance concentration, and engine effectiveness. What do those points have in common? People love using all of them in almost every aspect of existence.

The main causes of using percentages is that will they are practical plus easy to understand. Percent difference is a comparison of two numbers of the same measurement. Specifically, it is the difference between two numbers expressed as a percentage. The percent difference between two values is equal to their difference divided by their average.

So, percent difference can be found by first finding the difference between the numbers, then finding the average of the numbers, and then dividing.

Finally, multiply by to get a percentage. Thus, percent difference p is equal to the absolute value of a minus b , divided by a plus b divided by 2, times Here, using the same above formula 'a' will represent the initial value while 'b' will represent the final value. We can understand the steps to find the percentage difference formula using the following flowchart.

Example 1: The height of a tower is increased from 30 ft to 50 ft. Find the percent difference using the percent difference formula. Example 2: Mia wrote 53 instead of writing Find the percent difference between the numbers 35 and Example 3: Charles works hours per month and Steve works hours per month.

Calculate the percentage difference.